On Not Knowing: How Artists Teach - Call for Papers

ON NOT KNOWING: HOWARTISTS TEACH

Calls for Papers

In person conference, June 9 & 10, 2023 at The Glasgow School ofArt convened in partnership with Uniarts Helsinki’sAcademy of Fine Art.

We are delighted to share the first details of the programme for the conference.The full schedule including speaker bios will be released following the Call for Papers.There will also be a specially convened workshop for PhD/MPhil research students, supported by SGSAH, details to follow.

Please find below all of the Calls for Papers for sessions for the HowArtistsTeach Conference.

Applications to present a paper should be sent directly to the session convenors listed on each page Please send your abstracts to them by Tuesday the 28th February at the latest Queries regarding each Call for Papers should be sent directly to the session convenors

On Not Knowing: HowArtistsTeach Steering Committee

Professor Jaana Erkkilä-Hill (Uniarts, Helsinki)

Dr Elizabeth Fisher (Northumbria University)

Professor Rebecca Fortnum (GSA)

Dr Marianne Greated (GSA)

Dr Luis Guerra (Uniarts, Helsinki)

Dr Roddy Hunter (GSA)

Rory O’Neill (GSAStudentAssociation)

Professor Magnus Quaife (Uniarts, Helsinki)

Dr Timothy Smith (Uniarts, Helsinki)

Dr Henry Ward (Freelands Foundation)

For any general enquiries about the conference please contact the conference organiser

Rachael Burns, HowArtistsTeach@gsa ac uk

Programme - Sessions

*sessions that invite contributors through a Call for Papers, please find more details below

Art in Crises

JudyAnderson, Susan Cahill, Heather Leier, Erin Sutherland

Art School Matters: Regional entanglements in UK art education, 1976-1998

Prof Gavin Butt, ProfYsanne Holt, Dr Matthew Hearn

Beyond curriculum: the FineArt studio as a space of exception*

MaggieAyliffe,Andrew Bracey, Joanne Lee, Danica Maier, Christian Mieves, Laura Onions

DISTRACTED PEDAGOGY: activating attentional dispersal*

Moyra Derby, Flora Parrott

Feminist pedagogies into and out of theArt School

FelicityAllen, Majella Clancy, Lina Dzuverovic,Althea Greenan, Helena Reckitt, Lucy Reynolds, Hilary Robinson

New Material Encounters - New Materials and New Materialism*

Sue Brind, Justin Carter, Dr Elizabeth Hodson

Roving and Staying Put (in ‘wrong’places): modes of destabilizing pedagogic positions*

Oyinda Fakeye,Ama Ofeibea, Daniel Peltz, Serubiri Moses,Aura Seikkula

Teaching against the Tide – Engaging FirstYear FineArt Students in ‘Not Knowing’*

DrAnna Frances Douglas, Dr Jo McGonigal

There Is Something We Can Do:

From not-knowing to new theatres of encounter and agency within the art school*

Juan Cruz, Chantal Faust, Graham Hudson, Martin Newth

Unfinishing Things: Teaching in Flux*

Dan Dubowitz, José Ángel HidalgoArellano, Ray Lucas, Loris Rossi

Unseen Shores: TeachingArt at Public Universities in the US*

Julian Kreimer, Beth Livensperger, Gina Osterloh, George Rush

Writing Practices in theArt School

Joanne Lee, Julia Lockheart, Jenny Rintoul, Rachael Miles, Rebecca Bell

Programme - Workshops

Art Schools between the building & teams: Diagrams & the slices of time before the next meeting

Lisa Metherell, Cathy Wade

Café at the end of teaching: from knowing to affect?

Dr MaryAnne Francis

Learning toAct: Making Sites of Making

Dr Paul Stewart

Places where to start

Lisa Nyberg

Play pedagogy in Cleaved Into: gaming in the imaginative space of Loughborough

University sculpture collection with NEUSCHLOSS

Charles Danby, Lesley Guy,Allan Hughes, Kate Liston,Tom O’Sullivan and Mark

Rohtmaa-Jackson

Soft Radicle. Exchanges of Language(s), Culture and The Weight of Heritage

Niki Colclough, Perla Ramos

Speaking in Tongues: Do it, Show it, Say it.

Natalie Gale, Fiona Larkin

Speculative teaching - learning

Juli Reinartz

The International Peripatetic Sculptors Society

Roddy Buchanan, Peter McCaughey, Dr Ben Parry

This a chord. This is another. This is a third. NOW FORMABAND

Ross Sinclair

(under)development

Grace Gelder, Dr Marianne Mulvey

Calls for Papers

1. Beyond curriculum: the FineArt studio as a space of exception

MaggieAyliffe,Andrew Bracey, Joanne Lee, Danica Maier, Christian Mieves, Laura Onions

The session takes the form of an extended lunch break through which groups will explore the art school studio as a space of exception. Prompted by provocations from hosts and films of real studios, we ask: How can the studio foster community, develop curiosity and explore uncertainty? How can staff and students encounter together the unknown, intuitive, experimental and unexpected aspects of practice. Each lunch ‘course’ will focus on specific questions, using tablecloths to capture ideas and questions, actual and critical spillages. The ‘digestivo’ will see participants digest this dialogue and share it with the wider conference

We are looking for 1-3 minute films of art school studio spaces that show how studios actually are rather than promotional films common in marketised higher education All submissions will be compiled into a single film Please include the name of the art school and course(s) associated with the studio space

To apply please contactAndrew Bracey, abracey@lincoln ac uk

PEDAGOGY: activating attentional dispersal

Moyra Derby, Flora Parrott

Focus is conventionally considered a pedagogic ideal, however this session considers the creative potential of distraction In contrast to privileging certainty, coherence and singularity, distraction allows for scattered, messy, adaptive and associative thought processes Informed by the sensibilities of practice generated pedagogies and in response to the neurodiversity of art school communities, it considers the empathetic and responsive aspects of distraction and attentional dispersal, connecting to multi sensory and cognitively divergent aspects of not knowing

If we activate distraction, can we shift negative descriptions of boredom, indecision or lack of focus in learning environments into the positive attributes of a creative practitioner?

Inviting workshops and innovative formats that open out understandings of the creative potential of distraction, and are sensitive to issues students experience complying with narrow attentional expectations. Can include short papers but the emphasis is on multi-sensory, participatory approaches, with the overall session structure mindful of participants’attentional capacities.

To apply please contact Moyra Derby, mderby@uca.ac.uk

3 New Material Encounters - New Materials and New Materialism

Sue Brind, Justin Carter, Dr Elizabeth Hodson

The importance of materials and making have long held sway in art schools where learning through doing, play and experimentation are promoted and celebrated New Materialism foregrounds these ideas in new ways Notions of animacy and agency hold maker and matter in creative balance, acknowledging the material world’s inherent disorder: ‘life [being] forged in the turbulence of materials’ (Tim Ingold, 2016:8) In this context, the centrality of the human author is rightly questioned

Do these conditions - coupled with the shadow of the Anthropocene - demand a fresh outlook? How does learning and teaching respond to these new challenges and opportunities? How do we foster an open mindset in students where curiosity, speculation and improvisation are encouraged, and the voice of the material heard?

We invite responses that:

● address the unknowns of working with new materials or processes;

● foreground the haptic, the co-created, the collaborative;

● develop new value systems, including non-western knowledge

● encourage recycling, upcycling and an active awareness of the circular economy;

● consciously decentre the artist/maker and foreground the primary vitalism of materials.

Presentations should be 20 mins long with 20 minutes available afterwards for questions and discussion We ask for any technical requirements to be outlined in your proposal

To apply please contact Justin Carter, j carter@gsa ac uk

4 Roving and Staying Put (in ‘wrong’places): modes of destabilizing pedagogic positions

Oyinda Fakeye,Ama Ofeibea, Daniel Peltz, Serubiri Moses,Aura Seikkula

This session consists of brief presentations of the two models of extra-institutional artist education, both initiated in 2009: one on the African continent (Asiko Art School) that was committed to a roving pedagogy, positioning the educational institution as one that is ‘based’ nowhere and thus ‘does not know’ in relation to the sites where it manifests; and another (the Nordic Studio) that took place in a small, factory-town in rural Sweden, a ruin produced by extractive logics, and explored committing to this ‘used-up site’ as a place particularly well suited to certain kinds of knowing, particularly about the state of being abandoned by capitalist logics

The remainder of the session will be staged as a reflective dialog, between the principles involved in these two projects (and invited discussants), on their experience of each other’s work, the pedagogic principles at play in relation to the idea of ‘not knowing’, and the most recent outcomes of their work exploring a new place-based, pedagogy at the intersection of their work.

This session is open to contributions from alumni of theAsikoArt School and the Nordic/Baltic Studio as well as others involved in similar artist/curator run pedagogic experiments who are interested in serving as discussants on this panel (the session will be hybrid and thus is open to remote as well as in person proposals for participation)

To apply please contact Daniel Peltz, daniel peltz@uniarts fi

5 Teaching against the Tide – Engaging FirstYear FineArt Students in ‘Not Knowing’

DrAnna Frances Douglas, Dr Jo McGonigal

If we assume that a fine art degree programme focuses on ‘studio practice’ as a largely self-directed method of working, the question arises: how as artist-tutors are we preparing our first year students, many of whom come directly from school, and are therefore used to an exam-driven curriculum and pedagogy, to become self-determining young artists, confident with ‘not knowing’ and getting on with it anyway Furthermore, despite today’s multi-facetted ‘art world’ offering an array of career pathways, notions of talent, innovation, and novelty endure, ensuring both hierarchical divisiveness and competition Could the role of an art school be to offer an alternative model by supporting students in ‘not knowing’ as a life-long facility invaluable in today’s world of precarity and climate catastrophe?

We invite 20 mins. case-studies proposals from tutors engaging pedagogically with the following concerns, amongst others.To be followed by 20 mins. discussions.

● Stimulating haptic explorations, intuition and iteration

● Supplementing critical thinking with emotional intelligence

● Learning to navigate fear and supporting resilience

● Supporting togetherness, collaboration and solidarity

● Supporting neurodiversity

● Learning through the climate catastrophe

● Evaluating and co-designing programmes with students and tutors

To apply please contact DrAnna Frances Douglas and Dr Jo McGonigal, finart@leeds ac uk

6 There Is Something We Can Do: From not-knowing to new theatres of encounter and agency within the art school

Juan Cruz, Chantal Faust, Graham Hudson, Martin Newth

The Covid-19 lockdowns plunged artists, teachers, museums and educational institutions into a new theatre of encounter From navigating the strange landscape of screen-based interaction, practices arose that promoted shared authorship and participation With the return to the previously familiar context of face-to-face engagement, this session seeks to explore how and where these changes have become cemented in the pedagogies and practices of artists in higher education and beyond Drawing from case studies, initially from the RCA, London, Edinburgh College of Art and community settings, this session seeks to surface practice where the balance of agency has shifted towards active participation

Proposals of case studies are invited from artists, teachers and/or institutions in the form of short (5-7 minute) presentations, workshops or demonstrations. Proposals are welcomed that describe innovative or experimental teaching practices that have amplified or empowered new considerations of active participation and agency within or beyond the art school.

To apply please contact Martin Newth, martin.newth@rca.ac.uk

Unfinishing Things: Teaching in Flux

Dan Dubowitz, José Ángel HidalgoArellano, Ray Lucas, Loris Rossi

This panel proposes to investigate the teaching and learning of temporality An essential, but often overlooked quality in any creative practice is the quality of time folded into making More than merely measuring clock-time, the possibilities presented by temporal thinking are manifold

This multidisciplinary panel will investigate temporality in terms including but not limited to: linear, cyclical, iterative, meanwhile; diurnal & nocturnal, matter & memory, futures & utopias, speculation, intuition and duration How can we use temporal thinking to equip students to respond creatively to the questions we face today regarding material scarcity, climate emergency, and multiple inequalities?

We are seeking papers 20 minutes in length that explore the practices of pedagogy across a range of disciplines and interdisciplinary endeavours We are particularly interested in fields not conventionally considered as inherently ‘temporal’ These will form the basis of a discussant-led session at the end exploring common interests.

To apply please contact Ray Lucas, r.lucas@mmu.ac.uk

Unseen Shores: TeachingArt at Public Universities in the US

Julian Kreimer, Beth Livensperger, Gina Osterloh, George Rush

As professors at art programs within State university systems, our students are highly diverse economically, ethnically, and in their artistic and career ambitions In the wake of pandemic disruptions whose impacts continue to reverberate for our students, and AMIDST ongoing societal pressures and debates, we are interrogating the role of art pedagogy in the current moment For instance, how do we maintain the rigor required for our most ambitious students to become working artists while still providing an education for those who will not make art after graduating, and not always knowing who fits into which category? What are the markers of success? What role does new technologies play in our teachings? Of equal if not greater salience is finding ways to integrate decolonization and creating a culture of care

● How have BLM and decolonizing affected our curricula? What have we learned about what works and what doesn’t?

● How do we conceptualize university art training as an educational practice?

● Assignments that used to work that don’t anymore, and vice versa (now work, didn’t before)

● Specific resources we’ve leaned on shared lists, podcasts, certain publications, etc.

● How to address class and economic realities within our pedagogy?

Art professors teaching at NorthAmerican public colleges, universities, or art schools are invited to submit proposals for 15 minute talk on the topic listed and participation on the panel

To apply please contact Julian Kreimer, julian kreimer@purchase edu