Transpedagogy: Contemporary Art and the Vehicles of Education

Friday, May 15, 2009, 4:00 p.m.

Text source: MoMA's website - click here

What role has art education played in contemporary art practice? Artists, scholars, and critics talk about collaborative and participatory art, pedagogical experiments, and how such art can be understood and discussed. This is the first panel of a two-part symposium, presented in collaboration with The Serpentine Gallery, London. Speakers include Mark Allen, Director of the non-profit performance/installation space Machine Project; Claire Bishop, Associate Professor of Art History at the Graduate Center, New York; Tania Bruguera, artist; Jessica Gogan, Assistant Director for Education and Interpretation, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Grant Kester, Associate Professor, Art History Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego; Adam Lerner, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, and Chief Animator in the Department of Structures and Fictions; Bernardo Ortiz, artist and member of Lugar a Dudas, Cali, Colombia; Sally Tallant, Head of Education and Public Programmes at the Serpentine Gallery, London; Phillip Van den Bossche, Director, Kunstmuseum Aan Zee, Oostende, Belgium; artist Qiu Zhijie, among others.


 


Qiu Zhijie's answers to preliminary dialogue questionnaire

Preliminary Dialogue Questionnaire

Many art projects that incorporate pedagogy as a medium seem to be a reaction/response to institutionalized Education ¬ particularly museum education- functioning as a sort of institutional critique. Do you agree with this statement? And if so, what are the concrete aspects of educational methodologies that are being critiqued?

我不同意。在我的环境里，美术馆算不得很强大的势力，所以虽然我会在作品里面设置一些教育的性质，但绝对不是把美术馆或者任何一种机构的教育当作我的假想敌的，因为他们根本不配。他们本来就不怎么搞教育。

I don't agree. In my environment, art museums don't have a lot of power, so even though my works have some educational aspect, there is nothing about them or other institutions' education being my oponents, as from the beginning they don't match here. They don't have a real educational role.



What is to be learned by institutions from artist-instigated pedagogical projects?

由博物馆、学校等机构所推行的教育必须传递公众普遍认可的价值。但是这些价值本身是经由从多种相互矛盾的价值中协调和选取而得到确认的。基本上也常常是那些大家最不假思索地加以认同的价值观。也就是说，它们如此地被普遍接受以至于近乎自明。但艺术家进行的教育或准教育项目中很有可能提出一些尚未能够成为公共价值的特殊的价值观。这和机构教育所传递的普遍价值观是存在着冲突的。在艺术项目中不应该存在任何自明的价值观，而事实上更多的是对自明的价值观的一些试验性的扭转。就价值观本身而言这样的扭转如果比较全面，可能引起社会混乱。但是偏移了的价值观会自然地产生更新的价值传递方式。

Pedagogical projects held by institutions such as museums and schools disseminate values that are generally accepted by the public. These values are acknowledged and established in a process of selection from and negotiation among many conflicting values, and what are selected are always the most easily acceptable ones to the public. To put it in another way, these values are so easily to be accepted that they are almost obvious and self-explanatory. On the other hand, values advocated by artist-instigated pedagogical projects can include those that have not been accepted by the public. They can even be in conflict with those being disseminated by institutions. There should be no obvious/self-explanatory values in art projects, but rather experimental twists on such values. If such twists can be comprehensive and cover all aspects, they may bring confusion to the society. But naturally shifted values will also bring more ways to disseminate value.

机构的属性决定了它们不可能完全丢弃主流价值观，但是尝试使用一些另类一些的价值传递方式，有助于免除这些主流价值观的“自明性幻象”。

Because of the nature of institutions, they cannot discard mainstream values. However, to experiment with some unconventional ways of disseminating values will help to avoid the “self-explanatory illusion” of mainstream values.




What is to be learned (if anything) by the art practice from the way in which pedagogical methodologies understand its audiences and studies their responses?

通常意义上的艺术家的教育对于接受者的反应和互动有着狡猾的解释能力，基本上包括拒绝在内的任何一种反应都会被认为是好的结局，也就是说，其实很难说存在着很确定的指标。在这个意义上，美术馆之类的机构应该警惕艺术家教育模式的影响。相反，艺术家应该反思过于自由的教育反应设定，尝试去建立一些可以互相比照的指标，才可能发挥他们游戏性、试验性的特点，对体制内的教育方式有所启发。就目前而言我很难看到这样的可能性。

Pedagogical projects carried by artists in its general sense have a shrewd interpretative ability to the reaction and participation of their receiver. Any reaction from the receiver, including rejection, can be interpreted as a good result. It is hard to say that such pedagogical projects have a clear goal. In this sense, institutions such as museum should be on guard of pedagogical projects carried by artists. On the other hand, artists should rethink and revalue such interpretation, which has too much room for interpretation. They should try to establish certain cross-referencing guidelines. Only so can they utilize their projects’ advantage of being game-like and experimental, and give new ideas to pedagogical methods that are already existing in the system. For me in today’s world, the possibility to realize this is very slim.




Conventional pedagogy has set goals and parameters toward its audience. What are the benefits/downfalls in establishing similar structure to art projects that engage in similar practices?

艺术家从接受订单的传统中获得了针对特定人群来设定工作目标的模式，因此当然很重视对特定的目标人群的研究。这一点上所有的特种教育项目也是一样花功夫去研究特殊人群的，其成熟程度并不逊于艺术家们的工作。但是在另外的方面，艺术家的教育方式，在能够针对特定人群的同时，也着眼于想象中的未来或它处地观众，也就是说他对此时此地的特定人群有所关照同时也有所超越。具体的手段同时也是需要能够应对更长远的观察和思考。而这是通常有针对性的体制化教育比较无暇顾及的。体制化的教育项目通常设定了过于具体的目标，评估标准也比较具体，往往较为忽略象征的层面。

Artists learned the model of establishing goals toward specific groups of people from the tradition of taking commissions, so of course it is important for them to study specific groups of people. Similarly, any specific pedagogical project also relies on the study of a specific group of people. Moreover, while pedagogy developed by artists aims toward a specific group of people, it at the same time sets its goal toward an imagined future or a different group of audience. That is to say, an artist sets his goal toward a specific audience but also goes beyond it; specific parameters and methods should also be suitable for observations and studies of a broader scope. This is something that is beyond the systemized, clearly-defined conventional pedagogy. Systemized pedagogical projects in general set up concrete goals, with specific evaluation standards, and thus overlook symbolic levels.




How can we characterize the kind of participation that takes place in a work with a core pedagogical component?

当代作品中的参与性的特点是权威性的暂时缺失，即便艺术家自己的解释或者艺术家本人给出的理想参与方式都不被认为是唯一的权威，各种理解方式之间存在着讨论的余地。

What characterizes participation in contemporary art is the temporary absence of authority. Neither the artist’s way of interpretation nor the ideal way of participation set by him is considered the only authoritative voice. There is always room for other interpretations.




In what was the relationship drawn between performance art and performative pedagogy is useful and in which was is it unhelpful to understand this practice?

performance art本身就是原来的具有社会改造野心的行为艺术被机构吸收改造之后的一个保守的事物。相反，performative pedagogy在各种假设的情景里面工作，对于教育中的对主流意识形态的不反思，特别是上面说过的自明性presumed truth的幻觉有纠正的作用。它是好的教育的必然模式。其实也不是什么新鲜的模式。孔子和佛陀都是这么搞教育的。

Performance art, which originally possesses social reform ambitions, became a conservative thing after being assimilated and reformed by institutions. On the contrary, performative pedagogy operates in different hypothetical prospects, without a reflection on the mainstream ideology, in particularly it rectifies the presumed truth "illusion" mentionned above. It is a necessary model for good education. Actually it isn't a new model. Confucius and Buddha used the same education methods.



What is the distinction of approaches between using art as a vehicle to teach art vs. using artistic strategies toward creating a better understanding of other issues?


用艺术本身来教授艺术肯定不是一个好的方法。教艺术的时候最好不要谈论艺术。而应该把注意力集中在事物所存在的多种多样的可能性之上。最好的艺术教师，应该是关于事物的可能性的打捞者。
用艺术作为手段来帮助理解是有效的，也是在日常生活中时常发生和到处在发生的。但是最深刻的思想其实是不需要这种帮助的，它自身已经比任何一种艺术都更具有打动人的力量。

Using art itself to teach art is definitely not a good method. It is better not to talk about art when teaching art. One should focus on the multiple existing possibilities of things. The best art teacher probably is a dragger of things' possibilities.
Using art to understand things is effective, it regularly happens everywhere in our everyday life. But in fact deepest thoughts don't need that, they have a moving power stronger than any kind of art.





How can pedagogy, through the work of artists, can contribute to reinvent the gallery and museum practices?


In the activist realm, in what ways can artistic/pedagogical projects impact an audience that straight forward activism can not? Why is it important (is it important) to keep this practices within the artistic realm?

如果把创作设定为一种影响思考方式的工作，教育必定地成为创作工作的一部分。创造物品的更进一步的目的是创造人的感觉和思考方式，所以激进的艺术家必定把教育包含进创作工作中，这时对于社会的主动的姿态，所以教育内涵的存在对于艺术工作来说是必要的。

If we think creation as a type of work that can influence ways of thinking, education is no doubt part of such work. Another goal of creation is to create feelings and ways of thinking. Activist-artist will always include pedagogical goals in this creation; it is the manifestation of his activist nature. In this sense, the pedagogical component is always important to artistic creation.

而激进主义所涉及的议题在整个社会的价值体系中最初总是带有边缘性，艺术作品创造议题的能量和用实验性来自我解脱管制的性质，使它能够更好地和激进的话题亲和。激进主义自身容易引发的社会反弹通过艺术创作的游戏色彩，允许更多的人群有机会进入讨论。激进理念的表述在艺术作品中首先是用开放的形式引发趣味，而不是直接的表态。这能够有效地避免先入之见的拒绝。

The agenda of an activist, at least at its beginning stage, will always be marginalized by the established social system. Art creation has the capacity to create a debate and its experimental nature has the ability to free itself from constraints. Thus, art creation can provide a better way to engage activism. Society tends to reject activism, but with the help of art creation, for example its game-like quality, more people can be engaged in activism. The e­xpression of activist ideas in artistic realm should be open and stimulating, rather than being a direct declaration, in order to avoid any pre-conceived rejection.



How are these current practiced indebted to institutional critique and
relational aesthetics, and how do they contrast?

Is there a question or questions that you would like to ask other
participants?

Is there a topic within the previous questions on which you would be
interested in leading a breakout discussion?

更有趣的问题是，教育者从被教育者身上，以及教育的过程中学到了什么。

Funny is, what can an educator learn from his student and from the teaching process.

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