“Diverting The Attention”: Connecting Arts-Based Research With The Notion Of Event
Author(s):
Anna Majó (presenting / submitting) Judit Onsès (presenting)
Conference:
ECER 2016
Network:
29. Research on Arts Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

29 SES 05, Arts-based Research

Paper Session

Time:
2016-08-24
13:30-15:00
Room:
NM- J114
Chair:
Catarina Silva Martins

Contribution

Today, when thinking in contemporary culture different concepts are connected with: liquid modernity (Bauman, 2002); flatness in networked society (Gielen, 2013:2); the common (Garcés, 2013); transparency (Han, 2013), etc. How do these concepts affect to cultural and educational institutions? How do some institutions react to this here-and-now-always-becoming-and-always-changing?

Live in contemporaneity is not easy for such institutions, more akin with certain concepts like hierarchy, history, tradition, stability or certainty rather than those mentioned above. This is because it requires them new attention, new predisposition. However, it is not an impossible feat considering certain emerging projects focused on put in question the hegemonic model and rethinking themselves as a space of debate and production of inclusive knowledge.

This is the case of european project “Performing the museum”, an initiative of four different museums that aims to generate new thinking and open new practical possibilities on the future of such institutions. The museums participating on the project aim at re-evaluating and rethinking their resources: archives, collections, and working methods, in order to develop their potentials by creating knowledge and connecting to various types of audiences and social concerns.

In that framework, one of these museums, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, contacted with Experimentem amb l’ART, a cultural collective which works in artistic and pedagogical projects, to work on its archive. Both museum and collective are located in Barcelona. Thus born “Institutional fissures in the concept of openness“, an arts-based research about the concept of openness in cultural institutions and tensions and implications it entailed.

For this project, we have worked with two types of institution that constantly need rethinking: the school and the museum. As institutions, they are the result of an illustrated project that defended culture and education as the fundamental rights of citizens. We have selected a public primary school called Escola Dovella and the Fundació Antoni Tàpies as two examples of institutions which are consciously involved in a process of change. This will of change is settled under a concept of openness so that allows them activate actions that require an institutional reordering.

The research was comprised different phases: a first phase of previous research and definition of the topic; a second phase based on choosing the institutions and approaching to them; a third one that we called “diverting the attention”, thought as a public meeting with school and museum and as a closing research with institutions; and finally, a fourth phase of reflection and closure of project.

The communication focuses on third phase of the project, that in itself was a subproject, in which we organized an open journey/tour between two institutions, looking for other manners to organize a final presentation. The aims of “diverting the attention” were understanding it as an opportunity to explore different possibilities of arts-based research, as well as, connecting it with the notion of event as a space of production of knowledge (Atkinson). In this communication we would want to share with audience a case of presentation understood not only as a closed event, but as an open and knowledge-yet-to-come event and how arts-based research helped to carry it on.

Method

The “presentation event” called “Diverting the attention” meant a turning point in research. During the first part we were in a position of mediation and articulation in which we made several approaches towards two institutions separately. The research was based on visual cartographies, talks, interviews, search of literature, participation in activities, etc., in order to explore their ways of openness and tensions and implications entailed. However, for this other part we wanted to organize an open and public meeting between them, but also to give a turn in the research. The main objective of the meeting was escape the idea of presentation as a burial of the project. For this reason we had the purpose of generate a space to put in dialogue different ways to deal the challenges in each institution. The idea of the event allowed us not only to share experiences, understandings and methodologies about openness, but also to create displacements from our comfort zone of thinking in order to foster a critical and productive debate. For this reason we thought that the day had to follow the lines below: 1. Be an event where play with the movement and the idea of the "encounter" (Atkinson). We organised the meeting as a tour throughout both institutions, with displaced actions with the purpose of altering the normal order of the conversations or the assistants positions. The aim was allow to arise new ideas and perspectives around what we were inquiring. 2. Use strategies based in arts to allow arising another kind of knowledge in order to enrich our inquiry (Barone & Eisner, 2012) 3. Open the event beyond the institutions involved. It was essential the participation of different "disruptive/engaging" agents such as one sociologist, one dancer, one cultural manager and one narrator. Moreover, we count with other people that came because their interests were akin to the project. All of them introduced other gaze as well as opened new ways of thinking and understanding the research. In this communication, we will describe how we used different arts-based methods, in order to create a “presentation-event” that would be generator of knowledge. In addition to this, we also will explain the criteria used, and how the unexpected was present during all the journey, enriching and amplifying the debate.

Expected Outcomes

The event “Diverting the attention” report us different reflections and awarenesses: 1. Regarding to relationships: a) being a different kind of encountering, it fostered the assistants explored and put in practice other relationships, activating the existing as well as doing new ones arose. b) the displacements also fostered an uncomfortable/active presence from the agents involved. This leaded to them to talk from other position than they were used to, opening the debate to other points of view. c) as the event maintained a democratic tone, in which people from different social and political positions joined in the same place (director of museum, director of school, primary school teachers, students of Pedagogy degree, master and PhD. students, cultural managers, dancer, sociologist, artists, architects, etc.), it fostered to break the usual hierarchies, making possible other relationships among non equal condition assistants. 2. Regarding to processes: a) the event allowed to organizers learn more about arts-based research possibilities as well as explore them in a non-stop journey b) playing with spaces, agents and movement, looking for the constant rupture with the stablished, meant for us a laboratory to put in relation arts-based research, pedagogical theories and artistic theories. c) these explorations opened the debate generated until that moment, emerging new concepts and fostering new connections among the school, the museum, the public, the social, the cultural, and pedagogy. In summary, this research was built in collaboration, and the methodologies used fostered a continuous rethinking not only the institutions themselves but also rethink and put in question the concepts with which we defined ourselves and contemporaneity.

References

Atkinson, D. (n.d.a) The Event of Learning: Politics and Truth in Art and Art Education. Recovered 9 of January 2016 from http://faeb.com.br/livro03/Arquivos/palestras/dennis_atkinson.pdf Atkinson, D. (n.d.b) Pedagogy of the Event. Recovered 9 of January 2016 from http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/onn_atkinson.pdf Barone, T., & Eisner, E. (2012). Arts Based Research. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications. Bauman, Z. (2003). Modernidad líquida. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica de Argentina, S.A. (open in pdf) Gielen, P. (ed.) (2013). Institutional Attitudes. Instituting Art in a Flat World. Amsterdam: Valiz. (introduction in pdf) Garcés, M. (2013). Un mundo común. Barcelona: Ediciona Bellaterra. Han, B-C. (2013). La sociedad de la transparencia. Barcelona: Herder Editorial, S.L. Harris, A., Hunter, M. and Hall, C. (ed.) (2015). Critical Approaches to Arts-Based Research. The e-Journal. Multidisciplinary Journal in the Arts, 5(1). Recovered 9 of January 2016 from http://www.unescomelb.org/volume-5-issue-1 Vidiella, J. (2012). Espacios y políticas culturales de la emoción. Pedagogías de contacto y prácticas de experimentación feministas. In A. Collados y J. Rodrigo (Eds.), Transductores 2. Pedagogías en red y prácticas instituyentes (p. 62-84). Granada: Diputación Provincia de Granada. Vidiella, J. (2007). Performatividad y poder. Políticas de representación e identidad: corporización y performance. Revista DCO, danzacuerpobsesión, 7, 6-8. Recovered 9 of January 2016 from http://www.danza.es/multimedia/revista/performatividad-y-poder-politicas-de

Author Information

Anna Majó (presenting / submitting)
Fine Arts Faculty of University of Barcelona
Cultural pedagogies
Arenys de Munt
Judit Onsès (presenting)
University of Barcelona, Spain

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