A-Positioning
// Performance + Video Installation w/ José Cortes + Veronica Mockler // 2024-2025
The question of art education—what it is, what it does—has been debated by theorists and shaped by practitioners for decades. While often celebrated for its indeterminacy, the field remains resistant to change at both systemic and subjective levels. This inflexibility is not only a symptom of art(X)education’s institutional standardization and neoliberal recuperation but also reflects a deep-seated frustration: the paradoxical sense that change is both inevitable and impossible.
This project puts that frustration to the test through an art(X)education user dissatisfaction survey, an experiment designed to probe the very limits of what is perceived as possible—and impossible—within art(X)education today. Conceived, performed, filmed, and edited over the course of a road trip to Halifax for CSEA/SCÉA (June 2024), the project captures phone conversations with individuals reflecting on, and often frustrated by, the state of art and its education.
As an experiment in A-positioning, this work has led us to consider strange vantages, partial perspectives, barely audible frequencies, pedagogical personas, and embodied tactics that operate under the radar—or sometimes, right out the window.
Screenings + Discussions
A-Positioning premiered at CSEA/SCÉA (June 2024) and was later screened at Concordia University (September 2024), where we hosted a discussion on art(X)education’s challenges and possibilities. These events provided a space for critical reflection and collective dialogue on frustration as a generative force in educational and artistic practices.
Publications
This project will be further explored in our forthcoming book chapter, "Extreme Frustrations: A-Positioning Art Education’s Futures," in Extremity and the Future: Imagining Lives to Come, edited by Nelson Varas-Díaz (Florida International University) and Daniel Nevárez Araújo (University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras), to be published by Lexington.
