Paulo Freire and Educational Models as Art Practice

This is a much shortened piece of something I've been working on for the last little bit. I spoke about this today at a museum conversation at Brandeis. What do you think??
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On the occasion of the international biennale Manifesta 6, New York based artist and organizer Anthon Vidolke gathered what he called “An Incomplete Chronology of Experimental Art Schools”.[1] The theme of the 2006 biennale was “Notes for an Art School.” The form was a three-department post-graduate art institution that investigated the changing needs and roles of art education.[2][3]

Though the alternative art school has garnished some attention from critics, the increasing trend for artists to create educational platforms focusing not on art education but on the broader educational spectrum has received comparably little attention. Indeed, these platforms have yet to be placed into the conversation of participatory art practices, most specifically art historian Grant Kester’s designation, Dialogical Aesthetics.

Set apart from Relational Aesthetics artists like Harrell Fletcher of Learning to Love You More who invites participants to perform a series of assignments, documentation of which are published in an online community[4] or Rikrit Tiravanija who cooks Thai food for collectors, allowing the dinner to be artwork, dialogical aesthetic works have a clear social aim, according to theorist Grant Kester.[5] Indeed, even the term is an amalgamation of relational aesthetics and the desire to co-create humanity put forth by educational theorist Paulo Freire.[6] Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed calls for a dialogical learning, where the educator and the student engage in conversation and action, what Freire deems praxis.[7] It is only through the student and teacher agreeing to a compact of mutual learning and respect that equality might be achieved. In this talk, I focus on three educational platforms as art practices.

Portland based Red76 organized the “Laundry Lecture Series” beginning in late 2003 and continuing sporadically throughout 2006. Red76, run by Sam Gould with the assistance of various collaborators, states in their mission, “The guiding constructs thread between many of these initiatives being the facilitation of discussion, thought and action within public space, as well as the examination of what that space can be, and where that space may reside at any given time”.[8] For the “Laundry Lecture Series,” that space was the pedagogical setting and the Laundromat. These generally distinct spaces were placed in conversation for the purpose of the “Laundry Lecture Series”. People were invited to speak on areas of interest and expertise while utilizing the function of the space, doing laundry. The “Laundry Lecture Series” expands the space of the classroom by moving it from structures designed for learning to the spaces we find ourselves in every day. The quotidian nature of the space’s prescribed use also creates a contact zone of the laundromat, allowing those using the space for its original function to contribute to the discussion and discover something new while the wash and dry cycle finishes. A space and time that feels like a chore becomes a space for possibilities, both pragmatic and symbolic.
The “Sundown Schoolhouse” is a semi-mobile school-like institution developed by artist and architect Fritz Haeg. Self described as a series of “events, happenings, gatherings, meetings, pageantry, performances, shows, stunts, and spectacles,”[9] the “Sundown Schoolhouse” began in 2006 in Haeg’s home in Los Angeles. Frieze Magazine characterized the events as:

“part performance, part workshop, part seminar, intended to create a sense of convivial community among people who might otherwise never meet or consider one another’s professional interests as in any way relevant to their own”. [10]

Haeg pushes back from the language of the art world, eschewing relational aesthetics in favor of questioning what it means to collaborate.[11] He intends to bring people into conversation and collaboration on a variety of topics. The school is characterized by an open enrollment as events are publicized online and via an email list. “Sundown Schoolhouse” creates space and community through a diversity of approaches and topics.

A library is a place for learning, but as Walter Benjamin wrote in “Unpacking my Library,” personal libraries are as much sites for potential learning as they are investigations into the collector, “for what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order”.[12] New York based artist Martha Rosler, active since the 1960’s, brought together her collection of more than 7,700 volumes in 2007 at e-flux’s New York space.[13] Though removed from the original context of her Brooklyn home and Rutgers’s University office, the materials retained their original organization. The project functions somewhere between an archive – personal papers, clippings, and photo albums are scattered throughout – and a library. In addition, a series of reading groups are scheduled using books culled from her library; Anton Vidolke organized the first, getting “some thirty people reading and discussing Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, creating the sort of discursive space that gives rise to contemporary art at its finest”. [14]

In looking at these projects as a group, we are seeing a variety of types of institutions, functions, and desires. Together, the projects of Red76, Fritz Haeg, and Martha Rosler have a collective interest in creating spaces and fostering community that allows for a mutual process of learning, not unlike the pedagogy put forth by Paulo Freire. His pedagogy looks to the development reality through action and reflection, pursued with revolutionary love between the oppressed and the oppressor.[15] “They [teachers and students] discover themselves as [reality and knowledge’s] permanent recreators.”

However, there is the potential with alternative educational models as art projects that they continue to oppress the very constituents they intend to empower. This is because, though these projects are interested in co-creating reality through the symbolic act of creating space on the small scale of an individual project, at times these projects create vessels to be filled rather than platforms on which to build. With a vessel, the contents matter little and the materials form to the shape of the container; whereas a platform is little more than a space where things might potentially be created. Educational projects purport to be democratic, creating content together; however, in looking at the minutiae of each project, they can be viewed as more or less liberating, more or less democratic, more or less interested in increasing the humanity of the participants, as Freire would call for. We must address these projects in terms of authorship and audience, asking, where these projects fit into the trajectory of art production and the role of the art institution within society.

In each project, one artist is given authorship and authority over the project, which intends to speak for the participating group. Freire writes, “Any situation in which ‘A’ objectively exploits ‘B’ or hinders his and her pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence, even when sweetened by false generosity, because it interferes with the individual’s ontological and historical vocation to become more fully human”.[16] The structure of the art market is such that the name of a famous artist, such as Martha Rosler or Fritz Haeg, can produce the same capital returns that the former fetish object could. Even when collaborators dialogue, still, one voice reigns supreme.
Freire writes: “But to substitute monologue, slogans, and communiqués for dialogue is to attempt to liberate the oppressed with the instruments of domestication. Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects which must be saved from a burning building”. [17]

In the very worst instances, Freire likens the educational system to the bank: students are filled with the facts given by the teachers like deposits to an account. “The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are.”[18] And “the more the oppressors control the oppressed, the more they change them into apparently inanimate ‘things.’”[19] The passivity implied by this model is not far from the notion of the art object, which the artist imbues with meaning in the act of creation. In the model of the educational system as art project, the students participating function in much the same way that Freire warns against, and in the display and discussion of such projects, they are represented finally as a singular art object created by the artist.

And then, what happens next? If the audience is inanimate, by that I mean that it actually matters little who is in the audience, then so what? What is at stake? What can be done, can the work actually do anything? If the audience is inanimate, is any more possible than the dialogue that can occur when looking at a painting?

[1] Vidolke, Anton. “Exhibition as School in a Divided City.” http://www.manifesta.org/docs/02.pdf (accessed November 25, 2008).
[2] e-flux, The Best Surprise is No Surprise. JRPIRingier: Zurich. 2006: 167.
[3] e-flux, “Manifesta 6.” http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/3270 (accessed December 1, 2008).
[4] A selection of which were later published in a book of the same name.
[5] Kester, 110.
[6] Kester does not directly state this, however, his work draws upon Freire from the onset.
[7] Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum: New York. 51.
[8] Gould, Sam. “Red76 History.” http://www.red76.com/history.html (accessed December 9, 2008).
[9] http://www.fritzhaeg.com/salon.html
[10] Trainor, James. “Anyone Home?” Frieze Magazine. 99 (2006).
[11] Haeg, Fritz. “Sundown Schoolhouse Sessions Fall 2006.” http://www.fritzhaeg.com/schoolhouse/seasons/fall2006.html (accessed December 1, 2008).
[12] Benjamin, Walter. “Unpacking My Library” in Illuminations. New York: Harcort and Brace. 1968: 59.
[13] Since its initial installation, Martha Rosler’s library has traveled to Antwerp and Frankfurt with more locations planned.
[14] Valdez, Sarah. “Martha Rosler’s Bookmobile.” Art on Paper. 11.3 (2007): 18.
[15] Freire, 51.
[16] Freire, 55.
[17] Ibid, 65.
[18] Ibid, 72.
[19] Ibid, 69.





Appendix: List of Institutions
New Museum's Night School, New York, 2007-2008
http://www.newmuseum.org/event_series/night_school

United Nations Plaza, Berlin, 2006-2007
http://www.unitednationsplaza.org/

Martha Rosler’s Library, New York, 2007-present
http://www.e-flux.com/projects/library/

The Public School, Los Angeles, 2008
http://thepublicschool.org/

EduFactory, transnational and web based, 2007-present
http://www.edu-factory.org/index.php

Copenhagen Free University, Copenhagen, 2001-2007
http://www.copenhagenfreeuniversity.dk/

Informal University in Founding, Berlin, 2004-present
http://www.jackie-inhalt.net/main.html

Manoa Free University, Manoa, 2004-2008
http://www.manoafreeuniversity.org/

Sundown Schoolhouse, Los Angeles, 2006-Present
http://www.fritzhaeg.com/schoolhouse.html

School of Missing Studies, Balkans, 2005-2008
http://www.schoolofmissingstudies.net/

Homework, New York, 2007-present
http://www.homeworkproject.org/

The School of Panamerican Unrest, various American locations, 2006-present
http://www.panamericanismo.org/

Pegagogical Factory, Chicago, 2007
http://www.stockyardinstitute.org/PedagogicalFactory.html

The Exploding School, Copenhagen, 2007
http://www.dismalgarden.org/pages/exploded_school_contents.html

Learning Site, Copenhagen, 2005-present
http://learningsite.info/

Red76's Laundry Lecture Series, Portland, 2004-2006
http://www.red76.com/