We Contain Multitudes – Notions of collectivity, porosity and incidental ways of learning in art education
Tutors of the Base for Experiment, Art and Research (BEAR) programme at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem together present a toolbox of approaches to artistic and educational practices. With We Contain Multitudes, they offer a glimpse into some of their artistic learning methods, practices, experiments and exercises.
I shall start this text with a disclaimer: I have a thing for small pocket books with a flexible spine that withstand the rain. With its striking yellow cover and reader-friendly typeface, We Contain Multitudes: Expanding spaces and forms of mentorship within art education and practices is a sympathetic object. The attentive design with playful graphic elements, such as blobs and doodles spread across the pages, add to this likeability, as well as Joakim Derlow’s illustrations. The book is produced by the Base for Experiment, Art and Research (BEAR) programme at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem, and edited by course tutor Clare Butcher.
The publication presents a toolbox of approaches to artistic and educational practices that accentuate embodied knowledges and incidental and communal forms of learning. It also offers a glimpse into some specific artistic learning methods, practices, experiments and exercises by several of the programme’s contributors. The book contains five texts that are all, perhaps unintentionally, written in collaboration or as a dialogue between two or more contributors of the programme.
As often it is the case in artistic education, process takes precedence over outcome-oriented thinking (which is good!), yet what I appreciate most is the contributors’ attentiveness to listening and attunement to the (material) world. For instance, the contribution of Serena Leewith Lee Su-Feh and Masimba Hwati, emphasizes non-discursive ways of communication and the importance of listening in an embodied sense of being together, rather than an activation of ears and brains. They also emphasize listening to oneself, which opens ways for opening ways to others.
Listening and voicing as one of the publications’ leitmotifs return a few pages later in Clara Balaguer and Carmen José’s thought provoking proposition of ‘throated publishing’, which considers the ‘voice as a choral publishing/ circulating tool’. Harmonisation is discussed as an example of a vocal practice where every voice can sound together in their difference. The annotated conversation revolves around the materiality of the voice, the transformative quality of orality, and the voice’s capacity to traverse individual bodily boundaries. In this sense, the voice as a tool of communication allows for more fluidity and a wider range of perception, in comparison to visual and textual forms of transmitting information or traditional publishing methods.
Thinking with Balaguer and José’s invitation to consider vocalization as a publishing tool, I was excited to notice that one of the contributions is an audio and augmented reality piece. The visual, AR element of the work is accessible via a QR code in the publication, and while I was able to view the AR imagery, the sound component revealed itself only after some online search on the website of ArtEZ press. Introduced by Daniel Neugebauer, the piece of Olympia Bukkakis and Sanni Elst is based on Bukkakis’ intriguing essay ‘A Case for the Abolition of Men’, referencing among others Andrea Long Chu’s exploration of gender and desire, Valerie Solanas’ S.C.U.M manifesto, intertwined with a personal narrative of gender violence. And while I nurture a special place for sound and voice-based works in my heart, I can’t rid of the feeling that I’m listening to a text that was written to be read in mind and not to be read out loud. Despite the mysteriously buzzing soundscape, the fast paced reading with vocal distortions leaves me quietly wishing to read along and I fail to arrive at a sensory dimension.
The remaining texts in the book, by Nuraini Juliastuti and Carine Zaayman, focus on educational practices that escape dominant, colonial frameworks. It talks amongst others of the School of Improper Education, developed by the KUNCI study forum and collective in Yogyakarta, which places embodied practices and social interactions above object- and production-focused art making methods. Similarly, Gemma Medina Estupiñán and Alessandra Saviotti emphasize performative and theatrical games in the classroom as a pedagogical tool in their thinking about Arte Útil [1] methodology for art education.
As course directors Priscila Fernandes and Edward Clydesdale Thomson conclude the publication. In their afterword, they describe their vision of the programme in a dream scenario where ‘when walking round our graduation exhibition, we recognize nothing as art’, as the works on display bypass existing artistic vocabularies. This reminded me of a thought exercise I’ve heard about from an artist, which I often share with students. In this exercise students are tasked to come up with an idea that cannot be claimed as art. As simple as it sounds, I’m unsure if this task is achievable, and none of the students with whom we delved into this thought experiment came up with a solution. A stain of a leakage on the ceiling or an unexpectedly erupting scream can instantly turn into an art object as long as we acknowledge their status and ‘objecthood’ as such.
Still, there’s something to be said about artworks that have the capacity to escape formal, material or institutional expectations and common artistic vocabularies, or, as I like to imagine, alter and enrich our image of the world. But by reading this little book, I get a tingling sensation that we might be able to get by a step closer to a solution to this task, and that notions of collectivity, porosity and incidental ways of learning might be some of the lessons that may help us along this quest.
The book comprises of contributions from tutors only from the first year of the two-year progamme, as the editorial introduction states. And while I have a first-hand understanding of challenges of publishing in an art education setting (be it dependent on precarious budgets, or even more precarious human energy levels, and the like), I do hope for an extension of this little publication, with more voices to listen to and practices to learn from.
[1] Arte Útil, or in loose translation “useful art” is a concept developed by artist Tania Bruguera. In the artists’ definition Arte Útil goes further than suggesting art as a tool or device, but it encompasses individual and collective practices that develop methodologies in order deal with social issues. Source: https://museumarteutil.net/
Kris Dittel
is an independent curator, editor and writer, based in Rotterdam
