2024 CSEA/SCÉA National Conference: Prepositioning, Propositioning, and Positioning Art-Education
Thursday, June 27 to Sunday, June 30, 2024, Kjipuktuk, Mi'kma'ki {Halifax, Nova Scotia}
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A-Positional Coordinations: Putting ArtxEducation’s Frustrations to the Test
Workshop + Video Installation w/ Jose Cortes and Veronica Mockler
Saturday, June 29, 2024, 10:20-11:50 AM
The question of art education – what it is, what it does – has been in the mouths of theorists and the hands of practitioners for decades now. While the field is often characterized by, and celebrated for, its indiscernibility, there remains a stubborn resistance to change at both systemic and subjective levels (Coates, 2020, p. 45). This inflexibility is not just symptomatic of ArtxEducation’s ongoing institutional standardizations and neoliberal recuperations, but also points to a deep frustration in the field, a widespread dissatisfaction fuelled by the idea that change is impossible. In this performative panel session, we aim to put such frustrations to the test in order to develop a series of a-positional coordinations that seek to experiment with the very threshold of what is perceived im/possible in the first place. Bringing together our individual and collective work wherein we have developed protocols and devices for in/visibility, non-proprietary writing/making strategies and tactics for navigating horizon/less futures, this panel will involve a series of coordinated exercises wherein we will collectively develop and then deploy an a-positional navigation apparatus in situ. Importantly, our gesture towards a-positioning here is not apolitical in its desires and demands, but instead necessitates a critical interrogation of the partial perspectives and limited standpoints through which we have learned to strategically place ourselves as artist-educators. With this in mind, the aim of this performative and interactive panel is to collectively experiment with strange vantages, unthought distributions, barely audible frequencies and embodied tactics that fly under-the-radar. Working together with participants, we hope to frustrate those taken-for-granted modes of positioning that keep us stuck in place, leaving us feeling stranded, alienated and defeated, so as to move, with curiosity and care, toward actualizing ArtxEducation’s desired otherworlds.