Anahita Neghabat, MA
Symposium “Can Institutions Learn (to get going)?”, KinderKunstLabor, 22 November 2024
● Anahita Neghabat
● Social Anthropologist, Artist & Curator, Activist
● Researcher-in-Residence from August 2023 to February 2024 (7 months)
● During KinderKunstLabor’s first exhibition (building not yet finished at the time)
● Problematizing the ontological category of “the child”
● Being a child is not a static identity category; childhood is neither linear process nor universal experience (Abebe/Balagopalan 2023)
● global processes and crises create unequal childhoods (Titi 2023)
● These diverse experiences mean that children often perceive and experience the same spaces in very different ways (Alcoff 2006).
Abebe, T., & Balagopalan, S. (2023). Teaching ‘global childhoods’ in Childhood Studies. Childhood (Copenhagen), 30(4), 360–379.
Alcoff, L. M. (2006). Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. Oxford University Press.
Titi, N. (2023). Decolonising Theorising on Children: Moving Towards African-Centred Childhood Studies
Pedagogy of Sexual Violence and Trauma. South African Journal of Higher Education, 37(3), 229–245.
● How does an institution like the KinderKunstLabor, an exhibition space for contemporary art aiming to be for all children, approach this diversity?
● What implications does the ontological complexity of "the child" have for art mediation/education (Vermittlung)?
● How can we, as adults who work in art institutions, design co-creative, participatory processes that allow access and participation to all children?
● Decentering the child: From what childhood is, to how childhood is done
● Ontological Turn in Childhood Studies
● A relational ontological approach shifts attention from childhood as an identity category to the practices and processes through which childhood and "being a child" are realized.
● New Materialism
● Critically defining my research interest → Relationality!
● ongoing, informed consent
● anonymization, pseudonyms, abstract descriptions
● finding ways and moments to explain my role and research
● considering non-verbal expressions to ensure many perspectives are considered
● participant observation, conversations, interviews, establishing connections and trust over time as a basis
“Tell me: What do you think about this image?”
„This mutual force of attraction sets in motion flows of relations that inform and transform all participants.“ (Braidotti 2022: 2)
Creative/artistic production by children is always a "collective action between animate and inanimate things" (Hood/Kraehe 2017: 35)
Braidotti, R. (2022). The Virtual as Affirmative Praxis: A Neo-Materialist Approach. Humanities, 11: 62, 1–13.
Hood, E. J. & Kraehe, A. M. (2017) Creative Matter: New Mate-rialism in Art Education Research, Teaching, and Learning. In Art Education, 70:2, 32–38.
"In school, they are never this free. There is always something they have to do: notebooks they must write neatly in, a board they must look at, and here [note: in KinderKunstLabor], they just walk in and leave all boundaries behind."
– Birgit Becker, class teacher at Otto-Glöckel Primary School, October 2023
Installation “Chove Chuva” or “Rain rains” by Rivane Neuenschwander
Exhibition Dreams of Spaces, September 2023
© KinderKunstLabor,
Photo: Christoph Liebentritt
Installation “Chove Chuva” or “Rain rains” by Rivane Neuenschwander
Exhibition Dreams of Spaces, September 2023
© KinderKunstLabor,
Photo: Christoph Liebentritt
Results from the workshop:
"Flying
Feathers – Atelier de Brinquedos”
Exhibition “Dreams of Spaces”, September 2023
"I have a boy who is very shy... and struggles to meet the tasks and the pressure. And it is, of course, nice to see... At that moment, he was really happy. And didn't feel pressured because it wasn't about the result, but actually simply about the process, about the journey, about the creation."
– Educator 2, State Kindergarten Pottenbrunn, November 2023
"I was surprised... because normally, I always have to say 'look,' 'now that’s enough,' or 'do this,' but here not at all... The children's behavior changed because they were free and allowed to move freely and because they realized this is something different from school, this is something different from drawing class, this is something different from a structured space, this is somehow freer."
– Birgit Becker, Class Teacher at Otto-Glöckel Primary School, October 2023
