Notes on:
Lambert , Cath (2011) 'Psycho classrooms: teaching
as a work of art'. Social and Cultural
Geography 12 (1): 27 -45.
Dave Harris
Psycho Buildings was an exhibition of
architectural sculpture. This piece
discusses The Reinvention Centre at Westwood,
University of Warwick. It draws on Rancière
2004, The Politics of Aesthetics.
R has argued that there are always spaces in any
space, different ways to occupy it.
Different conditions can achieve difference.
The exhibition prompted some thinking about how
structures can disrupt habitual ways to understand
and consume. Psycho classrooms might utilize
the 'potential of space to influence
pedagogy'(28). This will assume equality of
intellectual capacity together with the 'a
willingness to allow uncertain outcomes '[an
important qualification]. Difference spaces
might particularly revalue 'embodied and emotional
knowledges'. Teaching needs to be
reconsidered as an aesthetic encounter, based on
R. The Reinvention Centre provides a case
study.
Feminist writers have been particularly useful in
talking about situating one's self, and this is
particularly important in academic practice.
Academics are 'necessarily imbricated' in
neoliberal educational reform. Her own space
turns on her interest in the sociology of
education in teaching and research in a Russell
Group university. New activity was sponsored
by becoming CETL [UK Government-funded--now
discontinued] attempting to promote excellence,
and these have produced innovation. The
Warwick Centre aimed at getting undergraduates to
be research active, and to facilitate research
based teaching and learning. Both
theoretical and practical intentions were
involved, the latter referring to the redesign of
classrooms. The project is part of a more
general concern 'to unsettle and redistribute
social, cultural, political and economic power
geometries' and to construct different knowledge
spaces. This familiar concern was energised
by reading R. There is a general background
of discussions about pedagogical art, including
discussion of '"haptic architectonics"'(30).
Critics of neoliberal hegemony often report
themselves as 'feeling stuck in a position of
impossibility', together with 'a reiteration of
hope', reconfirming links between education and
utopia and new imagined futures. Some of
these elements of critical pedagogy can be useful
when discussing educational spaces, but there are
limits to a politics of hope 'which tends towards
idealized and humanistic versions of community,
social organization and consensus'.
'Process, dissensus and ruin' can also lead to
hope, however, bringing optimism to discussion
normally discomforting. Lewis has argued
that anxiety can be productive, for example and
'"an emotion of the future"'. The stress on
incompletion and flux encourages 'process and
critique', perpetual questioning and openness, and
this can be expressed in suitable architecture
[links to Ngai on
ugly feelings?].
Possible effects of radical architecture have been
discussed before through the 'performative
function' of architecture (31). There is
also been an educational turn in contemporary
artistic practice [leading to the quote by Beuys
that teaching is a work of art - he apparently
also crossed boundaries between art activism and
pedagogy, seeing people and dialogue as artistic
materials, and creating social sculptures and even
'"debate based installations"'. Seems to
have been as big an influence as R, and his work
apparently combined with the founding of the
Situationist International, and the work of Debord
[hooray!] - situations and events were seen as new
artistic efforts to combat the spectacle. More
recent work picks up on 'relational art'
attempting to produce emerge and effects from
dialogue and social situations. It includes
specifically educational arts, such as a piece on
Foucault, or a project based on Einstein and
physics. Again there is an attempt to revive
spirits in the face of neoliberal reform, or to
generate pedagogy 'as an aesthetic encounter'
(32).
Critical geographers have also examined the
history and effects of space and its connection
with knowledge. Aesthetics clearly play a
role in the framing of knowledges. The
Copenhagen Free University was established by a
group of artists 'in their own flat' to focus on
the fluid subjective anti capitalist feelings and
knowledge that can be produced in domestic
spaces. Naming their efforts as a university
was a deliberate challenge to the normal
academy. The idea was to produce a porous
space and to generate '"experiential
knowledge"'. The implications for normal
lecturers in unfree universities include noting
the low expectations we have for students that
they will use their own experiences to create
their own knowledge.
We are obliged to deliver instead standard
packages of learning and knowledge, complete with
outcomes and assessment. Students are
'routinely characterized by ignorance and
lack'. Of course there is some challenge and
heterogeneity, for example when teaching geography
to focus on spaces and its dimensions, and to move
outside of the classroom. However, these
exceptions 'remain marginalized' and 'increasingly
individualised'. We have to constantly
challenge hegemonic institutions 'to generate
pedagogy and curricula which can allow the
expression of diverse experiences'. There is
a clear connection with critical educators like
Dewey, Freire, hooks, Giroux and Lather
who all stress active participation and of
the liberty of learners experiences.
Feminists in particular have tried to bring the
body into pedagogical debates and to insist on
addressing 'embodiment, emotion and desire'.
These need to be combined with an interest in
'spatial practice'.
The Psycho Buildings exhibition
constructed a new 'sensual space' (34) which
contrasts with a traditional box classroom.
Multiple senses were stimulated together with our
own bodies as structures. This is an
illustration of '"haptic architectonics"'discussed
earlier. It prompts thoughts about how to
transform classrooms to produce different
'visceral and emotional affects'. The
exhibition permits the visitor to bring his own
desires.
The Reinvention Centre was their own attempt to
develop a psycho classroom, not just to produce a
pleasing aesthetic effect, but to explore the
implications on how senses and perceptions might
be affected, and how this might lead to
implications for thought experience and
knowledge. Students and staff designed the
space, working with architects and local estate
workers. It was once a disused bar. It
occupied a rectangular shape in a detached
building. Already it seemed different from
the normal teaching space, and the flooring,
material and furniture are also different.
The furniture is mobile, there are no desks or
chairs, no dominant place for the teacher.
Decisions about where to go and how to use the
space 'must be made and remade by students' in
different situations. More options are
available, and actual configurations are open to
negotiation: students might cluster together or
separate out. The intention was to disrupt
the habitual way in which people occupy
educational space, and the audio and video they
might find within them, including the classic set
up with a projector or White Board. There
were to be 'no fixed or strong lines of sight or
orientation'. Multiple activities were to be
encouraged, while excessive noise was to be
controlled.
These practical decisions followed 'the guiding
metaphors of dissensus and ruin', based on early
art like that of Tatlin ['architecture as an
expression of political desire'(37)]. The
intention was to permit construction, without
suggesting answers or solutions to the crisis
engendered by neo liberalism [as expounded by
Neary]. There was a deliberate openness to
the future, 'allowing for conditions of struggle,
dissensus and ruin' [apparently, Readings 1996 has
suggested that the university is ruined, but saw
this as an opportunity for reconstruction.
Lather and others also use ruin 'in a similarly
generative ways'].
However, ruin is a poor blueprint for a
classroom! There was some notion of
'uncertainty and dissonance' behind the practical
decisions about lighting and layout,
however. R returns here to advocate
dissensus as a modification of the distribution of
the sensible and to defend his particular notion
of aesthetics as a generative force. One
implication was that lead to disrupt 'normalizing
forms of visibility' by resisting fixed
technologies and modifying lighting to open up the
ceiling and offer a different perspective.
The gripping piece of artwork also draws 'the gaze
of the curious'. [Photographs and details 38
F]
Perhaps most of the users experienced visual
pleasure, which foregrounds pleasure at least,
unlike most discussions of pedagogy. There
are 'ludic possibilities'(39) as 'utopian
possibilities of space'. Generally, the
whole issue of aesthetics and sensory experience,
and its impact on pedagogy, was highlighted.
Even softer flooring allows 'a "more fluid
relationship between figure and ground"'[talk up
here] and fluidity generally is encouraged as
students make themselves comfortable or
uncomfortable.
There were understandably diverse reactions,
however. Discomfort sometimes involves risk
and disorientation, as apparently Arnot 2007 [in
'Out of the Comfort Zone' in the Guardian
16 Oct 2007] has argued [see also
Zembylas and Boler]. However,
the space soon became more familiar.
Students and teachers did a focus on deliberately
creating a 'pedagogic space of encounter' (40),
sometimes an immersive one. Lambert's own
experience was mixed, with an initial feeling of
being overwhelmed ending in students solving the
problem by occupying only one corner of the room,
creating 'the effect of domestic rather than
institutional space' [in other words they
renormalised it, much as people do with open plan
classrooms]. It seemed more friendly and
conducive to discussion.
More extensive research was also pursued involving
systematic observation of groups of students and
teachers as they interacted in various traditional
and innovative classrooms. Preliminary
analysis has shown complexity, although most of
the intended usages have been realized.
However teachers trying to use banking methods in
the space 'struggle to maintain authority' while
learners' bodies 'can appear unruly and irregular'
as they need to shift about to stay comfortable:
apparently, the furniture is 'not really designed
for sitting down for a long period of time'.
In the best example, teachers and students 'are
receptive to generating and creating happenings,
ideas, experiences' and knowledges rather than
attempting to achieve fixed outcomes.
A particular history teacher, for example was able
to develop an approach 'based on "scenario - based
learning"', involving distributing resources
around the room, allowing students to select and
read them, and then sharing their thoughts and
ideas with others. In another experiment,
students were required to think of the classroom
as an art gallery and to show people around.
These methods do draw attention to the
construction of time and space [is this in the
research?]. This shows how ruin can be
integrated into curricula.
Instead of a machine for teaching, the Centre
became 'a space for thinking and critique'.
Practices even 'enact the spatialized form of
critique'. The Centre's motif incorporated
Freire on the need to invent and reinvent and
promote hopeful inquiry as '"restless, impatient,
continuing"'(41). Of course, this spaces
located within the normalizing academy, which
produces contradictions. There is no
certainty, only hopeful struggle with the
relations between HE and the 'wider social
political and economic world'.
There is no claim that modifying the sensory
environments will transform the production
of knowledge. The infrastructure of
educational institutions is also important.
However critical awareness of aesthetics and
haptics 'should be central to classroom design and
usage', and integral to discussions and decisions
about how to provide educational experience.
Aesthetics can disturb 'dominant regimes of the
visible and audible' and reveal the
invisible. As such, they 'should be the loci
for our critical theory and practice', as R
suggests: they contribute 'sensory
resources'.
R seems to confirm the role of expectations in the
Copenhagen Free University in redistributing roles
and competences. This is implied in his work
on Jacotot.. A radical assumption of
equality of intelligence should be the starting
point. Critical pedagogues must break with
progressive approaches to knowledge and social
change, which assume that the ignorant must
acquire relevant knowledge first R provides 'rich
theoretical resources'(42), and permits the idea
of ruin to generate new possibilities.
Pedagogic art also provides useful
resources. Psycho classrooms take different
shapes and forms, but they all challenge the
normal and this has implications for 'the
construction and definition of different
knowledges' and different roles for teacher and
student. They can lead to antagonism with
neoliberal institutions, and this again can
provide potentials. This is how we turn
teaching into works of art.
Rancière page
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