I AM Teacup from Conversations with the Seminals in Wonderland (The Researcher Tea Party) folded & woven selection of academic papers and tea chest, 2014-2016
Openings
“Researching and writing from the lived, inside moments of experience allows auto-ethnographers to cultivate an ‘epistemology of insiderness’ of being able to describe an experience in a way that ‘outside’ researchers never could” (Adams, Holman Jones & Ellis, 2015, p.30).
An opening. As a/r/tographer I am within this curated digital living inquiry as builder, designer, educator and curator of a storied curriculum. As Connelly and Clandinin (1988a) agree, “there is no better way to study curriculum than to study ourselves” (p. 31). Being within the culture that I am investigating, I am able to draw out the things that I (in art education) often take for granted (about creativity, identity and self discovery) and to share them in a wider learning community to build a better understanding of self as learner, of self as artist and, of self as researcher through the design and curation of digital portfolios as digital currere (Pinar, 1974; 1975).
“[T]he field of curriculum . . . resides at the very core of education” (Eisner, 1984, p. 209).
Mapping the rhizomatic exploration with critical auto-ethnography, I have been able to gaze inwardly at the self as a/r/tographer and then outwardly at curriculum, digital pedagogies and creativity and add another layer of theoretical and critical reflection while considering the pedagogical in my praxis. Intertwining and weaving the theoretical underpinnings of arts-based research has created an opening, as Eaves (2014) suggests, the “process that uses the expressive qualities of form to convey meaning to enlarge human understanding (Barone & Eisner, 2012, p.xii), synthesise intuitive thought with logic (Vallack, 2005), disrupt and reconcile (Estrella & Forinash, 2007) and develop an empathetic participation (Ewing, 2013)” (p.149). Gazing along the lines of flight has allowed me to look where portfolios as practice are “situated in the in-between, where theory-as-practice-as-process-as-complication intentionally unsettles perception and knowing through living inquiry” (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p.xxi). The in-between spaces found in the gaps where I continue to find creativity through sustained artful inquiry and creative practice have opened boundless paths.
“[T]he field of curriculum . . . resides at the very core of education” (Eisner, 1984, p. 209).
Mapping the rhizomatic exploration with critical auto-ethnography, I have been able to gaze inwardly at the self as a/r/tographer and then outwardly at curriculum, digital pedagogies and creativity and add another layer of theoretical and critical reflection while considering the pedagogical in my praxis. Intertwining and weaving the theoretical underpinnings of arts-based research has created an opening, as Eaves (2014) suggests, the “process that uses the expressive qualities of form to convey meaning to enlarge human understanding (Barone & Eisner, 2012, p.xii), synthesise intuitive thought with logic (Vallack, 2005), disrupt and reconcile (Estrella & Forinash, 2007) and develop an empathetic participation (Ewing, 2013)” (p.149). Gazing along the lines of flight has allowed me to look where portfolios as practice are “situated in the in-between, where theory-as-practice-as-process-as-complication intentionally unsettles perception and knowing through living inquiry” (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p.xxi). The in-between spaces found in the gaps where I continue to find creativity through sustained artful inquiry and creative practice have opened boundless paths.
|
Deep within the self
within the gaps the cracks the spaces I AM. Liminal spaces provide opportunities to see. To notice. To feel. To Be. An opening. A becoming. |
|
|
|
The openings that a/r/tography first awakened were affective, aesthetic spaces in wonderland, that shifted and turned my gaze into the wide portfolio community of practice. What I fell through, was an opening that led me to new openings, new gaps and new spaces where many contradictions and opportunities exist for creativity through “re-creation of self through reflection and creative practice” (Flood, 2013, p.217). Finding myself in the openings and gaps have led to a greater understanding of new methodologies and methods for research and curriculum design in art education, opening newer possibilities for this inquiry as a Portfolio. |
The journey on the road less travelled, is a necessary one to share from an insider’s perspective. I know the role that digital portfolios play as significant, transformative and personalised sites for growth. More traditional methodologies, would not have brought me to this place where I feel I can contribute not only to my field of portfolios, but my community of art educators and to creativity in the visual arts. The digital turn (Westera, 2013) in the humanities and in art history have provided the space for new agency, new encounters and new engagement in digital spaces and places. The result of the digitised collections of international cultural institutions in museums, galleries and libraries a decade ago, shifted our sight. We witnessed the digital force “re-conceptualising of the museum...and how art can be experienced” (Perlin, 1998, p.86) differently as a result. The digitised turn saw museums actively using the Internet, changing their role in the sector in contemporary society from sight to site through the participatory (Simon, 2010). As Nina Simon (2010) suggested, "providing audience-centric ways to enter and access cultural experiences is the first building block in personalizing the institution. The next step is to take a more individualized approach to identifying, acknowledging, and responding to people and their interests" (para. 16). Through this embrace of digital technology and a participatory culture, museums and galleries provided public access to museum databases for students and online audiences to read, study and participate online in digitised community centred collections. The digital turn has reshaped art and art history, enabling participation, activity, community, collaboration and relationality across boundaries and borders. The digital turn in art education to digital pedagogies for learning and exhibition is upon us.
|
|
“Digital tools have indeed led to a reshaping of the entire art history infrastructure, and to a renewal of methods and practice in the manipulation, study, presentation and dissemination of images and texts. New thinking and fields of activity have emerged, ranging from extensive campaigns to digitise artworks, and primary and secondary textual sources, to the creation of increasingly rich, user-friendly databases, and online publications” (Drucker, Helmreich, Lincoln & Rose, 2015, Para. 1). |
A turn
The digital encounter, is an opening in art education and an enabler for my creativity, creative practice and pedagogical development to harness and design a storied curriculum. This opening, this Portfolio and installation of overlapping praxis is a site of sustained practice and experiential learning as a/r/tographer and a site to develop the creative capacity of teachers and students. In the openings, “it is here that knowledge is often created as contradictions and resistances are faced, even interfaced with other knowledge” (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p.xxx). This Portfolio is not only an opening, it is a ‘rupture’ - a gap to create dialogue and discourse about the potential of portfolios in art education for creativity. “Creativity in schools is considered as a vital 21st Century skill to develop innovation and productivity” (Fleming, Gibson & Anderson, 2016, p.45). My storied curriculum is my own professional learning in creative thinking and learning, it is also for the professional development of my community to design a site that focuses on developing creativity in art education. It does so through the action of curation of stories, memories and experiences of research and pedagogy in portfolios as a personalised learning tool and publication as a currere. “Currere is the Latin infinitive of ‘curriculum,' meaning: to run the course: Thus currere refers to an existential experience of institutional structures. The method of currere is a strategy devised to disclose experience, so that we may see more of it and see more clearly. With such seeing can come deepened understanding of the running, and with this, can come deepened agency (Pinar & Grumet, 1976, p. vii)” (Pinar, 1976, p.518).
“The pedagogical turn in art offer alternatives to rethink and re-practice the public dimensions of art education from within” (Kalin, 2012, p.43) and to consider digital portfolios as relational sites in art education. These turns and openings are opportunities for art education to make shifts, create new dialogue with art, creativity and research in the digital. “Learning...occurs in communities, where the practice of learning is the participation in the community. A learning activity is, in essence, a conversation undertaken between the learner and other members of the community. This conversation, in the Web 2.0 era, consists not only of words but of images, video, multimedia and more” (Downes, 2006, para. 4). The digital turn in humanities and art history has shifted scholarship toward collaborative, relational and community learning.
This Portfolio, maps these openings and turns to reify the connectedness of a digital learning journey, of a life in the digital and physical borderlands. A living inquiry, transformed in the thresholds of a/r/tographic spaces, intertwined in learning theories and models for art education. The bound knowledge of a/r/t as threshold learning is folded in the multiple layers of educational theories and models that turn and shift in the digital, rendering new provocations for portfolios in secondary art education and a/r/tography as practice based research in art education. The digital unlike our physical and situated studios, open the doors and walls on our connections, communities and collaborations. We can dive into art gallery rooms through Google street view in Art Project and walk the halls of the Hermitage, we can explore the practice of a North American artist’s portfolio in Melbourne. We can seek to voyeuristically visit, intervene or provoke in the digital. We can partner, collaborate and communicate as never before. In the folds of these digital pages are the stories of participants in this (auto) ethnographic inquiry, designed to serve a digital pedagogical purpose as a creative storied curriculum. A “currere seeks to understand the contribution academic studies makes to one's understanding of his or her life. The student of educational experience takes as hypothesis that at any given moment he or she is in a "biographic situation" (Pinar & Grumet, 1976, p. 51), a structure of meaning that follows from past situations, but which contains, perhaps unarticulated, contradictions of past and present as well as images of possible futures” (Pinar, 1976, p.520).
“The pedagogical turn in art offer alternatives to rethink and re-practice the public dimensions of art education from within” (Kalin, 2012, p.43) and to consider digital portfolios as relational sites in art education. These turns and openings are opportunities for art education to make shifts, create new dialogue with art, creativity and research in the digital. “Learning...occurs in communities, where the practice of learning is the participation in the community. A learning activity is, in essence, a conversation undertaken between the learner and other members of the community. This conversation, in the Web 2.0 era, consists not only of words but of images, video, multimedia and more” (Downes, 2006, para. 4). The digital turn in humanities and art history has shifted scholarship toward collaborative, relational and community learning.
This Portfolio, maps these openings and turns to reify the connectedness of a digital learning journey, of a life in the digital and physical borderlands. A living inquiry, transformed in the thresholds of a/r/tographic spaces, intertwined in learning theories and models for art education. The bound knowledge of a/r/t as threshold learning is folded in the multiple layers of educational theories and models that turn and shift in the digital, rendering new provocations for portfolios in secondary art education and a/r/tography as practice based research in art education. The digital unlike our physical and situated studios, open the doors and walls on our connections, communities and collaborations. We can dive into art gallery rooms through Google street view in Art Project and walk the halls of the Hermitage, we can explore the practice of a North American artist’s portfolio in Melbourne. We can seek to voyeuristically visit, intervene or provoke in the digital. We can partner, collaborate and communicate as never before. In the folds of these digital pages are the stories of participants in this (auto) ethnographic inquiry, designed to serve a digital pedagogical purpose as a creative storied curriculum. A “currere seeks to understand the contribution academic studies makes to one's understanding of his or her life. The student of educational experience takes as hypothesis that at any given moment he or she is in a "biographic situation" (Pinar & Grumet, 1976, p. 51), a structure of meaning that follows from past situations, but which contains, perhaps unarticulated, contradictions of past and present as well as images of possible futures” (Pinar, 1976, p.520).
An opening. I have worked in some of the most amazing studios in schools and universities, with students as art makers, designers, historians and theorists, working in creative spaces and places with no boundaries, in the gaps. I have been able to teach and learn in sites of opportunity. I try and create space through noticing site. Site opens the place for creativity to happen. I am at once artist, researcher and teacher in this placemaking role. I try to create a site that not only nurtures and makes possible the potential of my students, but creates the opportunity for a becoming, a creative turn. I facilitate the space, making opportunities for discovery, creativity and opportunity through placemaking. There is a euphoria in a learning space when there is flow. A buzz, an air of possibility thinking (Craft, McConnon & Matthews, 2012). In these spaces, in these openings I try to make the space for an art encounter that affects through design thinking, reflection and imagination. I want to take my students to a space, an opening, that fosters and enables the creative in the situated and digital.
Spaces & Places
The experience of space and place is both a complex and multidimensional phenomenon for artist-teachers (Daichendt, 2010), as we seek to develop the experience of creative practice in the studio and facilitate an embodied way of knowing for our students (Vella, 2016). “Artist-teachers are not just artists who teach; their artistic thinking process is embedded within various elements of the teaching process” (Daichendt, 2010, p.11). We experience, embody, understand, see and relate to space and place through a range of different lenses as artists through artistry and artful inquiry (Lloyd, 2011) that invites practice into our teaching and learning of art.
Space and time, frame our learning experiences in art education. “This aesthetic perspective informs one’s teaching pedagogy potentially on many levels” (Daichendt, 2010, p.11). We also explore space as artist and audience in a range of places created for us by curators, educators, artists and by ourselves as makers. The liminal space that I reside in as an a/r/tographer offers a space for possibility, the possibility to design a storied curriculum here that captures and creates the space for creativity to thrive through five creative dispositions ‘inquisitive, persistent, imaginative, disciplined and collaborative’ (Lucas, Claxton & Spencer, 2013). These dispositions need to be explored with artist-students as artists in wonderland for deep learning and sustained creative practice in digital portfolios.
Artists and designers have been exploring space and place, creating sights through placemaking on and in site for centuries. Exploring the potential of the environment, histories and significance of place in congruence or in opposition. Artists such as Christo and Jean Claude create new sights in site for participants to play a role in mapping their own relationship with place.
Artists and designers have been exploring space and place, creating sights through placemaking on and in site for centuries. Exploring the potential of the environment, histories and significance of place in congruence or in opposition. Artists such as Christo and Jean Claude create new sights in site for participants to play a role in mapping their own relationship with place.
In 2005, I drove across the country to walk amongst The Gates, a site specific installation in New York City’s Central Park. Jean Claude and Christo had wrapped the park in saffron, creating intermittent blocks of colour along the walkways. Every block was a gate, a moment to stop, reflect, notice and then walk through a new opening. I had driven 36 hours from Denver Colorado to be here. To witness, to participate, to collaborate as a participant and audience member on one of the largest site specific installations ever constructed. “The gates were spaced at 12 feet (3.65 meter) intervals, except where low branches extended above the walkways. The gates and the fabric panels could be seen from far away through the leafless branches of the trees. The work of art remained for 16 days, then the gates were removed and the materials recycled” (Christo, 2016, para.1). When you leave your home and create a new one in another country, site and place are reified for an artist-teacher. A sense of place is brought to bear and an understanding of self in a new environment given focus. The Gates became a metaphor for my artist-researcher-teacher relationship with mapping the self, seeing placemaking as a necessary skill and capability for artists and artist as learning to learn through art.
“Place and identity are inextricably bound to one another. The two are co-produced as people come to identify with where they live, shape it, however modestly, and are in turn shaped by their environments, creating distinctive environmental autobiographies, the narratives we hold from the memories of those spaces and places that shaped us” (Gieseking & Mangold, 2014, p.73). Through installations of sound, object/s, and light, artists facilitate an embodied participation for themselves and their participants in art. “In an installation it is the body in its entirety which is asked to participate through its sensations, through vision obviously, but also hearing, touch, on occasions smell” (O’Sullivan, 2006, p. 51). We experience and understand, see and relate to spaces and creative places through a multitude of factors and lenses as an art audience, while spaces and places affect our engagement with a site. “Exploring the relationship between place and identity deepens our understandings of identity formation and the role of place in social and psychological development. The bonds between place and identity can influence social formations, cultural practices, and political actions” (Gieseking, Mangold, Katz, Low & Saegert, 2014, p.73). This concept of space and time frames the context of how we experience place, when we consider a digital portfolio through this lens, this opening invites new ways of thinking in art education, and opens the potential for teaching and learning with digital portfolios as new sites. Digital sites of exhibition, installation, showcase and retrospectives of praxis.
Reflection on an opening. I designed the digital site for this thesis Portfolio in five different spaces when I began this curated collection of creative practice. I played, wrote, designed and structured pages in a range of digital sites and spaces until I decided on this space. I invited ongoing responses from my research supervisors Associate Professor Wes Imms, Dr Marnee Watkins and Dr Adele Flood, along with artist, researcher and teacher colleagues, and shared places in social networks to gather the analytics. My own pedagogical turn in digital portfolios came in a higher education class I was teaching a few years ago. We opened the task up for capstone students to design a graduate portfolio based upon their capabilities and demonstration of graduate skills. It was a co-designed curriculum with internship students created to support the development of portfolio pedagogy and folio thinking in a new degree program. I offered my students the opportunity to select their own site that better reflected the metaphor for the portfolios they had designed in one of my first classes. Each had a different visual representation and story about the role that a graduate portfolio could and would play in their final semester of their undergraduate degrees. They chose very different spaces to publish their final spaces from each other, but each reflected the initial metaphors that mirrored their personalities, researcher personas and experiences of university life. They were a glimpse into the professional identity of these graduates. With this in mind, I too went back to my portfolio metaphor. A backpack. A wunderkammer. I wanted my site to demonstrate a traveller, a nomad, a mapped journey of rhizomatic learning. Someone that is searching and re-searching, and cartographically capturing the borders, along the boundaries. This opening came when I began to curate and install this a/r/t encounter. I was unable to merely copy and paste across artefacts and create pages that worked for the digital participant in this digital space that I selected. I had to curate, rewrite, re-edit footage and wrap reflection and narrative around my images and text again for the currere to be found. The curatorial process is a ‘becoming’ in action. The portfolio took a more pedagogical turn into creative practice through this Deleuzian ‘becoming’ for curriculum.
|
|
Developing a sense of place to develop one’s identity as artist, to create an art encounter for ‘becoming artist’ as both a learner and a professional is one aspect of portfolios where I see an opening for art education. As a hybrid action-researcher (Baskerville & Wood-Harper, 1996) I went to my community to ask them how they use these spaces, as a collaborator, as a member of the community. A common thread I found in these collected ethnographic stories was the personal place created in their sites. It was the relationality of the site created out of sharing work with an audience where they found a sense of self. A “sense of place is what makes a space specific, and generally relates to the physical characteristics of the environment, the affect and meanings (including memories and associations), and the activities afforded by the place including the social interactions associated with the place” (Lentini & Decortis, 2010, p.408).
|
Without an audience a digital portfolio has no purpose, no context in which to exist and thrive as an object, it has no role. Portfolios that activate and invite an audience serve a purpose as a relational artefact and require participation for its sociability as an art form. One of the issues we have faced in the ePortfolio community is that of the value of its relational encounter both for the student and the audience. When a portfolio is designed purely for assessment (teacher as audience), the actual learning and shift in identity through the design for audience that takes place is not validated or verified. It is upon curation as reflection on praxis that a digital portfolio is able to shift the sight toward the self to see the connections and common threads in practice through reflection in action. This ability to see the learning journey in creativity within a sustained practice of reflection is one of the opportunities not taken up by those who design portfolios for the wrong reasons and not for the learner to mirror back to themselves what they can do.
|
A digital portfolio can document and archive encounters with creativity and artful inquiry based knowledge as both process and product, as well as being the process and product itself. Designing portfolios in art education requires us to look at what it means to design space, and to create place in the digital while developing an understanding of art making as practice through skills and concepts in making and responding to art. Liminal space frames the context of how we as an audience experience place, when curated in a portfolio. “Places do not have intrinsic meanings and essences; they simply have meanings that are more conventional and “appropriate.” ... [The] meanings of place are created through practice” (Cresswell, 1996, p.17). In the digital place, opportunities for learning about relationships with self and others foster self efficacy and self awareness (Abrami et al., 2008; Wade, Sclater & Abrami, 2005), while working within a networked community. Here in the digital, creativity lies neatly. |
The Australian curriculum suggests that “creative thinking involves students learning to generate and apply new ideas in specific contexts, seeing existing situations in a new way, identifying alternative explanations, and seeing or making new links that generate a positive outcome. This includes combining parts to form something original, sifting and refining ideas to discover possibilities, constructing theories and objects, and acting on intuition” (ACARA, ND).
|
In the disruptive digital learning environment, how we stitch and weave pedagogy with digital literacies and digital innovation is a necessary creative capability for art educators. Much of the research into (e) portfolios for learning indicate that the development of a portfolio for learning and assessment (Lorenzo & Ittelson, 2005) is supported by the life-wide and lifelong approach to collecting, selecting and presenting artefacts for audiences throughout their learning journey and education (Bowness, 2014). As the portfolio is created, maintained and curated as a ‘living document’ (Cambridge, 2007) it continues in a cyclic or spiral pattern, iteratively needing maintenance, curation and re-presentation throughout the learning process - a metacognitive, high impact practice (Bowman et al. 2016; Eynon & Gambino (in press); Eynon, Gambino & Török, 2014; Eynon, B. & Gambino, 2014; Kuh, 2008). These are necessary portfolio thinking skills in collection, selection, reflection on and of practice, supported by curatorial skills in interpretation, assemblage, design, composition and storytelling that integrate and find their home in art education learning with ease.
In Canada, a two-year elementary arts based school study concluded “that an electronic web-based portfolio supports both the process and products created. The portfolio supports the learning process by providing students, parents, and teachers with opportunities to set goals, create strategies, and reflect on learning. Because the portfolio is web-based, students, parents, and teachers can access the portfolios both at home and at school. Products are also supported by the portfolio, as the videos created by the students were easily stored and shared. Students expressed considerable enthusiasm for the tool and demonstrated significant growth in understanding how to set goals and critique the work of their peers” (Upitis, 2011, p.47).
In Canada, a two-year elementary arts based school study concluded “that an electronic web-based portfolio supports both the process and products created. The portfolio supports the learning process by providing students, parents, and teachers with opportunities to set goals, create strategies, and reflect on learning. Because the portfolio is web-based, students, parents, and teachers can access the portfolios both at home and at school. Products are also supported by the portfolio, as the videos created by the students were easily stored and shared. Students expressed considerable enthusiasm for the tool and demonstrated significant growth in understanding how to set goals and critique the work of their peers” (Upitis, 2011, p.47).
In both a physical exhibition space and a digital one, it is ‘‘other people [who] help to create space—literally and metaphorically—in people’s lives. Relationships open doors to new places on both physical and emotional levels” (Lentini & Decortis, 2010, p.411). We are invited into these opportunities for inter-relationships with objects in galleries and museums, we have an expectation about our interaction in the site as participants and as audience will provide engagement, stimulus and invite narrative. In the digital exhibition - the artist online portfolio - we enter a different place. A digital portfolio offers multiple entrances and exits, access to a range of modes and experiences. When an artist designs a web space, curates their work in an online exhibition, makes decisions, curatorial choices about their practice they are designing a portfolio for an online audience that ‘walk’ through the exhibition how they choose to visit. As part of the process of selection for curation, artists reflect on a range of images and narrative to integrate and weave into the design of their digital rooms. In artist portfolios, we are able to explore artist practice, designed, composed and curated the way that the artist wants us to see and experience their work and lives, controlled and contained, yet open and connected.
A digital exhibition as portfolio is one way to use the metaphor of site and shift the context of exhibit. Lentini and Decortis (2010) proposed five dimensions to represent the types of experiences and relationships that we have with physical spaces, these are “geometrical and geographical, sensorial, cultural, personal and relational” (p.413).
Stepping into these dimensions, I explore digital portfolio exhibitions through my a/r/t lenses:
1. “Geometrical and Geographical experience is the apprehension of the spatial qualities of the environment”
In the digital, these geo-experiences are boundary-less and part of the criteria for selection of site for display. Placemaking in the digital is about user interaction and participation along designed pathways that ease navigation between artefacts. “Places do not have intrinsic meanings and essences; they simply have meanings that are more conventional and “appropriate.” ... [The] meanings of place are created through practice” (Cresswell, 1996, p.17). Practice considerations include multimodal interaction and material practice, use of space and dialogue between modes and compositional page devices such as banners, blocks and text columns to create the feeling of a fourth dimension in the liminal. A digital portfolio is not an eBook, it is a rhizomatic space and the experience needs to afford this affect/effect.
2. “Sensorial experience stands for the apprehension of the sensorial qualities of the environment: the colours, the smells, the material, and the textures”
As a digital installation, the sensory experience is created in a portfolio through the use of multimodal artefacts and the use of video and image as ethnography to tell a story. In this Portfolio, I have woven the co-participating artist voices throughout my own to invite the sense of discussion between places and spaces, sites and sights. Each artist was filmed in their working and making environments to create a more personal interaction for the audience. Working with video as method enabled me to create a dialogue between the personal and professional, and to demonstrate the sensory in the digital environment through the colours of the surroundings and backdrops, birds, people and voice.
3. “Cultural experience represents the apprehension of the behavioural appropriateness, of the cultural expectations and understandings of behaviours, and corollary of the activities that are expected (and accepted) to occur in a particular setting”
There is baggage that surrounds physically situated art installations, galleries and museums. This baggage holds our appropriate responses and behaviours neatly inside and these are echoed through the halls and reframed as we enter each area. In digital spaces the (n)etiquette is more nuanced as we enter in our time, from anywhere in any place. We can be previewing a particular artist work a gallery through Google Art Project while comparatively investigating the practice of an artist through their digital portfolio in Brazil. I am drawn to curation as an experience, because of the storytelling nature of the curator as a gift, an event, a mapping (Martinon, 2013). Museums are places of storytelling (Bedford, 2001) and if we consider the artist digital portfolio as site of exhibition we are given the cues to create spaces of importance and cultural recognition through a new form of digital narrative in art. The cultural experience is defined by the artist in their digital portfolio, they choose how we approach their work and practice in the setting they design and curate for us as audience. The skills inherent in this digital language and curation of space as place need to be taught and embedded in our art education to enable skills in digital visuacy, curation and placemaking, digital composition and site design.
4. “Personal experience figures the meaningful experiences-in-place that are mainly experienced at an individual level these are the opportunities that places offer for reflection, introspection, self-understanding and personal growth”
In the digital portfolio we are offered time to reflect and consider an artist’s creative practice in a pedagogical space, where a visitor can participate through multi-modal dialogic provided by the artist to construct a narrative and digital story around artefacts. For the artist designing and curating the assemblage of the digital portfolio, similarly the meaningful experience where self understanding and growth in practice occurs through the reflective cycle required in the curation of the site experience is an encounter in becoming (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).
5. “Relational experience represents the opportunities for interpersonal relationships and interactions that happen in places, contributing to our development as individuals and as members of a community”
In the digital artist’s portfolio, art is a participatory and relational practice created in the art encounter of the site. We can dive into an artist’s oeuvre, move amongst a life’s work in purposeful, curated, relational spaces that when composed, create a place for an audience to view, interpret, critique and understand. However, without the audience, the site is not engaged, not useful without the interaction. These digital artefacts shift their role to become relational objects (Bourriaud, 2002). “Works of art never exist independently or discretely. An art object always constitutes the nexus between its maker(s) and those that receive it...The artist acts as an agent to create the work of art; the work of art conveys the agency of the artist to the recipient; the recipient is a ‘patient’ of the artist’s agency carried by the work” (Windsor, 2011, para.8).
1. “Geometrical and Geographical experience is the apprehension of the spatial qualities of the environment”
In the digital, these geo-experiences are boundary-less and part of the criteria for selection of site for display. Placemaking in the digital is about user interaction and participation along designed pathways that ease navigation between artefacts. “Places do not have intrinsic meanings and essences; they simply have meanings that are more conventional and “appropriate.” ... [The] meanings of place are created through practice” (Cresswell, 1996, p.17). Practice considerations include multimodal interaction and material practice, use of space and dialogue between modes and compositional page devices such as banners, blocks and text columns to create the feeling of a fourth dimension in the liminal. A digital portfolio is not an eBook, it is a rhizomatic space and the experience needs to afford this affect/effect.
2. “Sensorial experience stands for the apprehension of the sensorial qualities of the environment: the colours, the smells, the material, and the textures”
As a digital installation, the sensory experience is created in a portfolio through the use of multimodal artefacts and the use of video and image as ethnography to tell a story. In this Portfolio, I have woven the co-participating artist voices throughout my own to invite the sense of discussion between places and spaces, sites and sights. Each artist was filmed in their working and making environments to create a more personal interaction for the audience. Working with video as method enabled me to create a dialogue between the personal and professional, and to demonstrate the sensory in the digital environment through the colours of the surroundings and backdrops, birds, people and voice.
3. “Cultural experience represents the apprehension of the behavioural appropriateness, of the cultural expectations and understandings of behaviours, and corollary of the activities that are expected (and accepted) to occur in a particular setting”
There is baggage that surrounds physically situated art installations, galleries and museums. This baggage holds our appropriate responses and behaviours neatly inside and these are echoed through the halls and reframed as we enter each area. In digital spaces the (n)etiquette is more nuanced as we enter in our time, from anywhere in any place. We can be previewing a particular artist work a gallery through Google Art Project while comparatively investigating the practice of an artist through their digital portfolio in Brazil. I am drawn to curation as an experience, because of the storytelling nature of the curator as a gift, an event, a mapping (Martinon, 2013). Museums are places of storytelling (Bedford, 2001) and if we consider the artist digital portfolio as site of exhibition we are given the cues to create spaces of importance and cultural recognition through a new form of digital narrative in art. The cultural experience is defined by the artist in their digital portfolio, they choose how we approach their work and practice in the setting they design and curate for us as audience. The skills inherent in this digital language and curation of space as place need to be taught and embedded in our art education to enable skills in digital visuacy, curation and placemaking, digital composition and site design.
4. “Personal experience figures the meaningful experiences-in-place that are mainly experienced at an individual level these are the opportunities that places offer for reflection, introspection, self-understanding and personal growth”
In the digital portfolio we are offered time to reflect and consider an artist’s creative practice in a pedagogical space, where a visitor can participate through multi-modal dialogic provided by the artist to construct a narrative and digital story around artefacts. For the artist designing and curating the assemblage of the digital portfolio, similarly the meaningful experience where self understanding and growth in practice occurs through the reflective cycle required in the curation of the site experience is an encounter in becoming (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).
5. “Relational experience represents the opportunities for interpersonal relationships and interactions that happen in places, contributing to our development as individuals and as members of a community”
In the digital artist’s portfolio, art is a participatory and relational practice created in the art encounter of the site. We can dive into an artist’s oeuvre, move amongst a life’s work in purposeful, curated, relational spaces that when composed, create a place for an audience to view, interpret, critique and understand. However, without the audience, the site is not engaged, not useful without the interaction. These digital artefacts shift their role to become relational objects (Bourriaud, 2002). “Works of art never exist independently or discretely. An art object always constitutes the nexus between its maker(s) and those that receive it...The artist acts as an agent to create the work of art; the work of art conveys the agency of the artist to the recipient; the recipient is a ‘patient’ of the artist’s agency carried by the work” (Windsor, 2011, para.8).
An artist’s digital portfolio site is a curated glimpse of a creative identity, assembled through a selection of artefacts constructed through woven bodies of work, in a relational story. Artist portfolio sites can be curated by the artist or curated for the artist by a gallery or artist representative. My discussion here in this A/R/T Portfolio is always focused on the artist created portfolio sites, just as this site is curated, designed and created by me. As a participant, when we visit an artist’s digital site, we are led through the geometrical and geographical, sensorial, cultural, personal and relational spaces. As participants just as in the physical exhibition space we are directed in our reading of the work the way the artist wants us to travel, dictated to by the size, framing and other curatorial devices. We travel around exhibition spaces on our own walking paths as we create a journey in the place designed for us. This is why I have designed and curated this A/R/T Portfolio, to model this type of learning design that I have researched for so long, while allowing you as participant here to work your way through my collections of ethnography and biography as currere.
Portfolio Openings
The 'digital' has shifted all things we know. Disruptive shared economy products such uber, airbnb and digital computer phones we carry in our pockets. Digital openings have made an impact on the constructed meaning of ‘portfolio’. A portfolio is no longer only an analogue online version of the paper portfolio, chapterised and creator controlled, it is now a vibrant user experience. This is one of the issues of the 'e' in eportfolio for me as a researcher in this field. The ‘e’ indicates that the portfolio is an analogue space, constructed around a chapter order, page components and reading left to right, from up to down as per the needs of the designer, creator or student. It signifies the electronic, not the digital.
I define a portfolio as a curated site of exhibition, a digital cabinet of wonder created and systemised for the audience through process of self reflection.
A wunderkammer of experience, expertise and entrepreneurship, where an artist can develop a community of practice, network, connect and develop a site through their own embodied knowledge for their professional communities as a product itself, an art encounter. To create the opportunity for more artist designed, artist owned and artist curated digital spaces as portfolios we need to integrate and transform our teaching and creative practices to include the digital within school based art education curriculum. To invite discourse into the art education community about site, sight and cite. To extend our embodied understanding of a/r/t into art education, we must consider the potential of the digital to extend and grow our practice beyond our physical borders.
Digital disruption and relational aesthetics have shifted our sight about what art is, what artist is and how audiences engage with art. Artists with skills in digital literacy can claim spaces to present themselves, open their audience and create opportunities for thinking about art and art as theoretical discourse. Some universities and art schools have developed digital portfolio programs into their curriculum to support and extend early career artists practice beyond the site of education and launch them into their profession. Institutions such as Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) have developed a culture of digital exhibition for their students (http://portfolios.risd.edu) to showcase and exhibit their creative practice while still enrolled to support identity formation as Artist. My shift asks us to develop this digital culture earlier, to offer insight into praxis through reflection as threshold learning in art education for portfolios as sites of exhibition and learning through reflection as artist. Learning about self as a digital citizen, about self as artist, about art and about art as audience through curation in a personalised digital portfolio opens the possibilities for creativity and for reverberations in art education.
I define a portfolio as a curated site of exhibition, a digital cabinet of wonder created and systemised for the audience through process of self reflection.
A wunderkammer of experience, expertise and entrepreneurship, where an artist can develop a community of practice, network, connect and develop a site through their own embodied knowledge for their professional communities as a product itself, an art encounter. To create the opportunity for more artist designed, artist owned and artist curated digital spaces as portfolios we need to integrate and transform our teaching and creative practices to include the digital within school based art education curriculum. To invite discourse into the art education community about site, sight and cite. To extend our embodied understanding of a/r/t into art education, we must consider the potential of the digital to extend and grow our practice beyond our physical borders.
Digital disruption and relational aesthetics have shifted our sight about what art is, what artist is and how audiences engage with art. Artists with skills in digital literacy can claim spaces to present themselves, open their audience and create opportunities for thinking about art and art as theoretical discourse. Some universities and art schools have developed digital portfolio programs into their curriculum to support and extend early career artists practice beyond the site of education and launch them into their profession. Institutions such as Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) have developed a culture of digital exhibition for their students (http://portfolios.risd.edu) to showcase and exhibit their creative practice while still enrolled to support identity formation as Artist. My shift asks us to develop this digital culture earlier, to offer insight into praxis through reflection as threshold learning in art education for portfolios as sites of exhibition and learning through reflection as artist. Learning about self as a digital citizen, about self as artist, about art and about art as audience through curation in a personalised digital portfolio opens the possibilities for creativity and for reverberations in art education.
In this A/R/T Portfolio, I have curated my thesis and study as a living inquiry, where each chapter represents the conceptual practices of my a/r/tographic explorations through relational renderings. I propose that portfolios are creative art encounters that contain “purposeful ideation, exploration and critical reflection” (Tishman & Palley, 2010, p.12) and provide a space for transformative learning through an ongoing dialogue with the self as maker. They provide a space to see, reflect, learn, notice and learn through an iterative design thinking process, a cyclic process of reflection and curation of digital praxis. The digital creates the space for new ideas, new opportunities to learn. Digital portfolios are sites of creativity, sustained practice and new opportunities for new knowledge. As the digital turn in humanities has reified, “new knowledge is not just new content but also new ways of organizing, classifying, and interacting with content. This means that a major part of the intellectual contribution of a digital project is the design of the interface, the database, and the code, all of which govern the form of the content” (Presner, 2011).
This rendered opening, has offered a space, a relational and liminal space for me to consider new possibilities for engaging with a/r/tography and sharing my educational stories through curriculum design. Relational inquiry and relational research allows me time to portray my a/r/tographic curriculum design model for creativity. Underlying the overlaps are gaps, liminal spaces for creative practice for the artist/teacher, artist/researcher and artist. Lucas, Claxton and Spencer (2013) recently suggested a working definition of creativity. They state that creativity is
This rendered opening, has offered a space, a relational and liminal space for me to consider new possibilities for engaging with a/r/tography and sharing my educational stories through curriculum design. Relational inquiry and relational research allows me time to portray my a/r/tographic curriculum design model for creativity. Underlying the overlaps are gaps, liminal spaces for creative practice for the artist/teacher, artist/researcher and artist. Lucas, Claxton and Spencer (2013) recently suggested a working definition of creativity. They state that creativity is
- “Complex and multi-faceted, occurring in all domains of life (Treffinger et al., 2002);
- Learnable (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996);
- Core to what it is to be successful today (Sternberg, 1996);
- Capable of being analysed at an individual level in terms of dispositions (Guilford, 1950); and
- Strongly influenced by context and by social factors (Lave and Wenger, 1991)” (p.6).
|
To further this working definition of creativity in this opening, I would like to add Kaufman’s definition and to build on this rupture for portfolios in art education. Kaufman (2009) building on the work of Rhodes (1961) and Baron (1955) identified, “that there are four ways that creativity can be studied (often called the Four P’s): Process, Product, Person and Place. In other words, when we talk about creativity we might be talking about how to be creative (the process), what’s creative (the product), who’s creative (the person), and where and when we are creative (the place)” (Kaufman, 2009, NPN). Just as Runco (2007) intervened to add persuasion and potential to make six Ps of creativity, I choose an intervention in Kaufman’s 4P’s to include a fifth P - practice, in this pedagogical opening. This definition of the 5 Ps: Process, Product, Person, Practice, Place is more fluid, readily reshaped; pliable, and provides the opportunity to be understood in conversation with relational portfolio pedagogies for art education. The 5 Ps offer a pedagogic framework to design portfolio learning in art.
|
5 Ps for Digital portfolios and creativity: Process, Product, Person, Practice, Place
|
This pedagogical approach of person, process, practice, product and place sees students engaging in learning in and about art, through art making, art criticism and art history in a portfolio. My philosophy of visual arts education is based on the premise of authentic pedagogical theories of teaching and learning that strive to teach students to investigate the world of the artist and artwork through perspectives that act as lenses for investigation. The portfolio as a site, offers a space for subjective, cultural, structural and postmodern viewpoints to be presented, serving as a post-structural tool that offers an insight for students to examine the practice of artist through a becoming and being with. This includes an investigation into how social, cultural, economic and political factors influence creativity and how an audience play a role in this practice. An Artist in Wonderland explores portfolio learning through these frames and was written to build a/r/tographic pedagogy and creative practice in secondary art education. Designed as an authentic task to present real world digital relevance for students.
Authentic tasks are investigated over a sustained period of time and provide opportunities for students to examine the task from different perspectives in roles authentic to the context of the design. Authentic tasks also provide opportunities for collaboration, provides space for reflection for the learner and result in a valuable product that can be utilised afterward (Herrington, Reeves & Oliver, 2010). Digital portfolios have the potential to provide a platform for an authentic artist experience and holistic development through authentic learning of a range of skills and theoretical, practical, cultural and social capabilities in art education. Portfolios have a long history in education as lifelong learning tools as Jisc (UK) confirms, “e-Portfolios are not a new concept. In various guises, digital presentations of skills and competences, online records of achievement and action plans with opportunities for reflection have been in use in education for nearly a decade” (Jisc, 2014). In art, digital portfolios have the ability to be an authentic art encounter (Bourriaud, 2002) when contextualised as sites for and of creativity, through reflection on process, curation of product, designed by the self for the self as artist (person) through iterative and deep sustained reflection on practice in a site through place-making.
Authentic tasks are investigated over a sustained period of time and provide opportunities for students to examine the task from different perspectives in roles authentic to the context of the design. Authentic tasks also provide opportunities for collaboration, provides space for reflection for the learner and result in a valuable product that can be utilised afterward (Herrington, Reeves & Oliver, 2010). Digital portfolios have the potential to provide a platform for an authentic artist experience and holistic development through authentic learning of a range of skills and theoretical, practical, cultural and social capabilities in art education. Portfolios have a long history in education as lifelong learning tools as Jisc (UK) confirms, “e-Portfolios are not a new concept. In various guises, digital presentations of skills and competences, online records of achievement and action plans with opportunities for reflection have been in use in education for nearly a decade” (Jisc, 2014). In art, digital portfolios have the ability to be an authentic art encounter (Bourriaud, 2002) when contextualised as sites for and of creativity, through reflection on process, curation of product, designed by the self for the self as artist (person) through iterative and deep sustained reflection on practice in a site through place-making.
|
|
Openings. Plastic and paint, 2015
Keys made to signify SXSWedu Badge Alliance Panel presentation (March) & AAEEBL Annual Keynote (9July).
|
Relational Openings
“How do you make a class operate like a work of art?” ask Guattari, (1995, p. 133). Within the gaps of creativity lie learning spaces to create a place in portfolios that invite empathy, imagination, inquiry, ideation, collaborative practice and prototyping. I see this bricolage here in my own site specific installation. A site of my own creative practice curated as a digital Portfolio thesis as currere.
“Art is this complex event that brings about the possibility of something new” (Sullivan, 2006, p.2).
“Art is this complex event that brings about the possibility of something new” (Sullivan, 2006, p.2).
In 2009, I went to the 53rd International Venice Biennale, Making Worlds and the 10th Biennale de Lyon, The Spectacle of the Everyday with a group of graduate and undergraduate students studying art history and criticism, and curatorial studies at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. Venice “works as a metaphor for A/r/tography” shares Graeme Sullivan (2008, p.234) and this visit for me to Venice and then to Lyon was triggered by the metaphorical visualisation of Sullivan’s, and is furthered by my own rendering of a biennial that is multifaceted, relational, sensory, intersectional, living, relational and provocative. To extend the relationship of this memory and reflection further, my ongoing reverberations continue and I am reminded of my close reading of Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics and spectator as participatory audience in the seminal reading ‘Participation’ by Bishop (2006), pre-reading before my visit to these significant biennials. Bourriaud had edited and published Relational Aesthetics (1998) almost ten years before these exhibitions, at the time however, many of the exhibiting artists and their practice were still heavily informed by their reading of the text and subsequent theories and critics who followed with participatory art dialogue. Daniel Birnbaum, the Director of the Biennale said before it opened, “We’re going to create a show that is closer to the site of production and creation – the studio. While it won’t be some big relational aesthetics thing – that is, not just an art school or a studio – there may be some works that will be displayed still in production” (Thorne, 2009, NPN).
Now my own relational and participatory experience is laid bare in this a/r/tographical inquiry and Portfolio, informed theoretically, historically and aesthetically as artist, educator, researcher, curator and audience. Claire Bishop’s seminal edited collection (2006) brought significant changes to my fields of art practice, curation and art education, as her foreword reminds us, “In recent decades artists have progressively expanded the boundaries of art as they have sought to engage with an increasingly pluralistic environment. Teaching, curating and understanding of art and visual culture are likewise no longer grounded in traditional aesthetics but centered on significant ideas, topics and themes ranging from the everyday to the uncanny, the psychoanalytical to the political” (p.5) a trigger for any a/r/tographer to help reconcile their identities.
Now my own relational and participatory experience is laid bare in this a/r/tographical inquiry and Portfolio, informed theoretically, historically and aesthetically as artist, educator, researcher, curator and audience. Claire Bishop’s seminal edited collection (2006) brought significant changes to my fields of art practice, curation and art education, as her foreword reminds us, “In recent decades artists have progressively expanded the boundaries of art as they have sought to engage with an increasingly pluralistic environment. Teaching, curating and understanding of art and visual culture are likewise no longer grounded in traditional aesthetics but centered on significant ideas, topics and themes ranging from the everyday to the uncanny, the psychoanalytical to the political” (p.5) a trigger for any a/r/tographer to help reconcile their identities.
We met at the Arsenale on a cold but clear morning, notebooks, pencils and cameras at the ready. Led by two of my mentors and revered Australian art figures, Dr Felicity Fenner and Dr David McNeill. I was thrilled to be here in a place that typified the art world for me, rich in history while steeped high in the contemporary art world’s disruptive atmosphere. I had been intrigued by space and placemaking for some time as an artist. My graduating exhibition in 1994 was a series of ceramic vessels that were hand built raku forms that stood one metre tall. These ten figures stood on their own, holding the space while together carefully supporting each other in place. In my curatorial studies, a decade later, I explored space and placemaking as curator. I developed skills and knowledge in designing and creating a place in spaces that may not have not been curated before, all informed by the relational, participatory and collaborative. Here in Venice that cold and clear morning, I watched the waves lap the shore in high tide and eagerly waited for my troupe to gather before we purchased our tickets and began to explore. The first room I recall like I was still there, was Tomas Saraceneo’s ‘Galaxies Forming along Filaments, like Droplets along the Strand’s of a Spider’s Web’ (2009).
Saraceneo’s work typifies the a/r/tographic experience for me, the line is tangled yet direct, the shape multifaceted yet clear, the space contextual and purposeful. ‘Galaxies Forming along Filaments, like Droplets along the Strand’s of a Spider’s Web’ was a living, breathing site specific work, existing in the in-between, the slashes.
Leaving Venice by boat was a magical experience. I had time to reflect on my time of wonder with three colleagues and discuss our exploration of curated contemporary art. I was ‘hanging’ with three arts based international lecturers in an Italian speedboat after being picked up in the canal out the back of our Hotel. I was in a total sensory overload, the magic of the canals, after being at the biennale, art parties and crit sessions; this was about all I could ask for as a nerdy artist, researcher and teacher. Later that afternoon, we flew out of Venice airport to Lyon over the ice covered Swiss mountains. The sky clear and blue over the grey mountains with glistening white ice and snow. The short flight gave me time to write, draw and reflect on my becoming. Relational art, just as relational research is personal. You are invited into a life, a lived experience as an observer, sometimes participant or voyeur. It is moving and transformational. In educational discourse we use the term threshold learning to define what is transformational and often troublesome in learning and knowledge acquisition. This participatory experience of being with and in relational spaces and curated places of praxis was bound, integrative, irreversible and truly transformative.
Saraceneo’s work typifies the a/r/tographic experience for me, the line is tangled yet direct, the shape multifaceted yet clear, the space contextual and purposeful. ‘Galaxies Forming along Filaments, like Droplets along the Strand’s of a Spider’s Web’ was a living, breathing site specific work, existing in the in-between, the slashes.
Leaving Venice by boat was a magical experience. I had time to reflect on my time of wonder with three colleagues and discuss our exploration of curated contemporary art. I was ‘hanging’ with three arts based international lecturers in an Italian speedboat after being picked up in the canal out the back of our Hotel. I was in a total sensory overload, the magic of the canals, after being at the biennale, art parties and crit sessions; this was about all I could ask for as a nerdy artist, researcher and teacher. Later that afternoon, we flew out of Venice airport to Lyon over the ice covered Swiss mountains. The sky clear and blue over the grey mountains with glistening white ice and snow. The short flight gave me time to write, draw and reflect on my becoming. Relational art, just as relational research is personal. You are invited into a life, a lived experience as an observer, sometimes participant or voyeur. It is moving and transformational. In educational discourse we use the term threshold learning to define what is transformational and often troublesome in learning and knowledge acquisition. This participatory experience of being with and in relational spaces and curated places of praxis was bound, integrative, irreversible and truly transformative.
“Knowledge is relational, dependent on contexts and philosophy, and can not be separated from an understanding of the self and its multiple embedded identities” (Suominen Guyas, 2008, p. 25).
The Lyon Biennale began like Venice, a cool crisp blue sky with the nervous energy of contemporary art enthusiasts. I was more prepared for the onslaught of emotion that I was about to experience than when I entered the Arsenale. I had worked at the Sydney Biennale in 2006 and the works where I installed and worked at the Wharf were participatory and community based art, but not to the extent that I had witnessed in Venice and Lyon where I truly became an active part of the art and played a role in their being. This sense of place was created by the curator and the artist, in conversation, visible in the space and relied on me as an active participant to complete the work.
On this clear day we visited the site of the Old Sugar Factory in the Confluence district. On the top floor was Dora García’s ‘Steal this book’ (2009). The work included specially printed little black books that read, ‘steal this book’ in white block print. The books were laid out in high piles of books on a white plinth. Close by the installation was a guard, not a normal looking biennial invigilator, but a personal guard to the work, and they looked like a security guard. I picked up a book and opened it, after a glance from the guard that this was ok. No one else was reading, just looking and moving on. I read the English translation of the Introduction. It read: “if you have this book in your hands, chances are that you stand in an exhibition, in a room dedicated to the artist Dora Garcia. Not far from you should be a sign that indicates that this book, or rather a certain number of these, is what constitutes the exhibited work. Equally not far from you, there should be a guard, who from time to time casts a glance in your direction and surveys your coming and goings. If you have opened this book and are reading these lines, you will also have cast a glance at the guard beforehand, and looked for a sign of approval or prohibition…...
So? Take this book, put it in your pocket, in your bag, and leave. If you dare. If you don’t do it now, if you regret it later, you will have to come back, purchase another entrance ticket, and there will be perhaps another guard who is more aggressively disposed…”
That was it. I had to have this book. Surely the guard was a part of the installation, or were they? Had they not been invited to participate willingly?
Run.
I shoved that book in my bag and I ran. I ran through a crowd, past a sculptural work and into the fire exit. On the landing I looked in my bag. I was now a part of Dora Garcia’s work relationally. I had stolen, ‘steal this book’ in France on a trip with colleagues and researchers led by my mentors. I was thrilled. I had intervened in a relational inquiry.
On this clear day we visited the site of the Old Sugar Factory in the Confluence district. On the top floor was Dora García’s ‘Steal this book’ (2009). The work included specially printed little black books that read, ‘steal this book’ in white block print. The books were laid out in high piles of books on a white plinth. Close by the installation was a guard, not a normal looking biennial invigilator, but a personal guard to the work, and they looked like a security guard. I picked up a book and opened it, after a glance from the guard that this was ok. No one else was reading, just looking and moving on. I read the English translation of the Introduction. It read: “if you have this book in your hands, chances are that you stand in an exhibition, in a room dedicated to the artist Dora Garcia. Not far from you should be a sign that indicates that this book, or rather a certain number of these, is what constitutes the exhibited work. Equally not far from you, there should be a guard, who from time to time casts a glance in your direction and surveys your coming and goings. If you have opened this book and are reading these lines, you will also have cast a glance at the guard beforehand, and looked for a sign of approval or prohibition…...
So? Take this book, put it in your pocket, in your bag, and leave. If you dare. If you don’t do it now, if you regret it later, you will have to come back, purchase another entrance ticket, and there will be perhaps another guard who is more aggressively disposed…”
That was it. I had to have this book. Surely the guard was a part of the installation, or were they? Had they not been invited to participate willingly?
Run.
I shoved that book in my bag and I ran. I ran through a crowd, past a sculptural work and into the fire exit. On the landing I looked in my bag. I was now a part of Dora Garcia’s work relationally. I had stolen, ‘steal this book’ in France on a trip with colleagues and researchers led by my mentors. I was thrilled. I had intervened in a relational inquiry.
Identity
“Anzaldúa’s (1999b) notion of identities as clusters of stories that we tell about ourselves and others tell about us is useful because the cluster-of-stories emphasis allows for the sense of hybridity, complexity, and contradiction that I see in identity, without diminishing identity to incoherence. The fact that others tell those stories about us calls to mind the important point that identities are always situated in relationships, and that power plays a role in how identities get enacted and how people get positioned on the basis of those identities. I might tweak this notion of story telling by saying that these clusters of stories are performed or enacted, rather than only told. Seeing the stories as performed allows us to see identities as lived and relational, rather than as something set that we narrate to others” (McCarthey & Birr Moje, 2002, p.231).
|
I AM I seek moments. Spaces, gaps and openings. I am searching, for chances, closure and breaks. I am sharing, playing and becoming. I am able. I am artist, research and teacher. As an artist, I make art as researcher and teacher. As a researcher, I research as artist and teacher. As a teacher, I teach as artist and researcher. |
In this opening, identity is folded within the gaps of creativity. There is the identity of the learner, the art education student I am keen to support and develop through pedagogies that invite understanding of self. There is the identity of the artist-researcher-teacher that I embody. There is the identity presented in the portfolio, an identity shaped, curated and observed through the selection of artefacts that story the creative self. An identity that is socially positioned and occupied as artist-teacher (Vella, 2016). Here in this opening, I offer digital portfolios as spaces to develop the self through sense making and validation of self by communities of practice. “Having one’s social identity as a group member verified activates a sense of belongingness and raises one’s self worth” (Burke & Stets, 2009, p.121). Designing learning for process, product, person, practice and place in a portfolio in a co-constructed environment to build upon what our students already know, are learning and who they are, has the potential to disrupt and open art education for a new century of learning and teaching.