Autumn 2021 Annotated Bibliography
I just finished up my final essay paper reflecting upon my learning and experience in the course on Teaching Studio Practice in Art Education. I was very excited about this course as I anticipated that the course might dig into some of the nuts and bolts of actual artistic practice and teaching. Upon my launch into the course, I found myself in a heavy reading by Walker, analyzing the studies of French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze. I really struggled with the reading at first, trying to grasp the ideas and concepts of the use of nonsense and play as it pertains to artistic practice. Ingold talked of making and artistic practice and the act of participant observation as a way of knowing from the inside. At the end of the tunnel, I feel that I have embraced the course and the teachings walking away with a better sense of valuing the process of artmaking over product and how to induce students to creatively explore new thought and experiences.
My fall selections for my annotated bibliography includes works by Dr. Sydney R. Walker, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Arts Administration, Education & Policy, and Dr. Tim Ingold, Professor of Social Anthropology, at the University of Aberdeen. I was also introduced to a many notable artists in this course, two of which are Gabriel Orozco and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Walker, S.R. (2019) Naming Play for Artmaking.
This article seeks to point out play as an important mode of discovery and artistic practice.
Remarking of the significance of play for Fluxus and Happenings artists,
art historian Owen F. Smith (2011) writes, “These artists and groups sought to open up potential out of a desire to participate in the world without fixed goals or definitive characteristics—that is to reform, to associate, to create without a traditionally required predetermined end and, most important to play (p. 119).”
The article seeks to support its validation of play noting the practices of artists in various movements such as Dadaism, Surrealism, Fluxus and Happenings art movements.
The author goes on to try and define play as an illogical or lack of process or procedure in the service of a goal. A fusion of sense and nonsense.
Disruptive, Participatory, experimental, humorous, subjective, and playing with traditional institutional practices of art and art display are given as ways that artists have used play in art making.
The Museum of Contemporary Art. (Sep 24, 2015) Gabriel Orozco. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/ohZHe6o51tE
This video talks about the artworks of contemporary artist Gabriel Orozco. The artist’s works and concepts of moving through everyday life with an artistic lens are discussed by personnel of the MOCA.
Stokes, R. (February 3, 2012) Inside Out. Rirkrit Tiravanija: Cooking Up an Art Experience. [Video]. https://assets.moma.org/momaorg/shared/video_file/video_file/1189/Rirkrit_Free-h264-640-360_1.mp4
Staff and visitors of the MOMA discuss and share experiences about the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija’s installation piece, Free, where the artist did not display any artwork, but rather created a lounge and served curry and rice to attendees. The experience was noted to be very different from traditional museum exhibitions and provided an unusual and novel way that connected patrons.
Walker, S.R. (2019) Naming Play for Artmaking. Chapt. 1 Artmaking and Nonsense. 1-27.
Key Pedagogical Points
• Nonsense should function as a conceptual tool, not for the purposes of
entertainment or shock, but to elicit new ways of thinking
• Nonsense should not be considered a stand-alone element, but intertwined
with sense making
• Nonsense requires structure, more than simply doing whatever
• Nonsense brings heterogeneous and paradoxical things together. If it’s
logical, it’s not nonsense
• Nonsense works best with the ordinary, not the bizarre
Walker, S.R. (2014) Everyday Play. Artmaking and Nonsense. pp 1-18.
This article considers the artistic value of everyday things, practices and activities and what importance they have in shaping the society that ignores these often-mundane scenes daily. The author refers to Ben Highmore (2002) who identifies the quotidian with the intersection of the macro and micro, a characterization of the everyday as both large overarching structures of social power and small daily rituals (pg. 3). The article investigates Kaprow, who sought to erase the boundaries between art and everyday life, depicting group activities and experimental art making.
Curator Helen Molesworth (2009) comments on Kaprow’s work as:
Allan Kaprow’s legacy is enormous and is seen across the territory of artmaking
today, from the predominance of installation art and performance, to the idea that the artist is a person who is given the permission to be questioning and playful (Walker, S.R. 2014).
The author and Kaprow challenge us as educators to create experiences, not representations. To give the student or the audience an instruction to interpret and experience in the everyday, rather than trying to represent that everyday happening.
Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Routledge. Chapter 1 Knowing from the inside.
Ingold, a professor of Social Anthropology at the university of Aberdeen, UK., opens with the position that the act of experiencing and doing things oneself is how we learn, not by someone telling us how to do something. He continues to distinguish the difference between Anthropology and ethnography:
Anthropology is studying with and learning from; it is carried forward in a process of life, and effects transformations within that process. Ethnography is a study of and learning about, its enduring products are recollective accounts which serve a documentary purpose. (Ingold, p. 16)
Ingold continues, describing participant observation as a way of knowing from the inside. The art of inquiry, he describes, is the act of allowing knowledge to build from the practical and observational engagements with people around us. He notes the similarities in practice between art and anthropology and the act of engulfing oneself into the research and living the experience necessary for inquiry. He goes on to describe the course he created at Aberdeen on Art, Architecture, Anthropology and Archeology and how participant observation and the art of inquiry play major roles in the practice of all of these disciplines. He surmises that in order to teach a discipline, one must practice it and to practice it is to teach it.
Chapter 2. The Materials of Life
Ingold points out the importance of looking at objects as they apply to life and to recognize the materials that they are made from and how they relate to the life they currently or previously had. To make things, we must engage with materials. That engagement will continue after we are done with the making.
Materiality is a duality existing in an argument presented and debated by Ingold. Objects and artifacts are made of materials and their relation to human construction and social value give them meaning. At the same time, materials have a flow and a voice, and a maker must correspond with that material’s voice.