Old Skool

SymposiumLGP are organising a symposium of leading academics, artists, curators and writers to analyse the echoes of events at CSAD 1968 - 72 and look at current art educational practice and the perceived systematised failures and/or successes. It will examine the role that the regional art education institution played in the art education narrative and its significance to the wider counter culture of the 70s. In the late sixties and early seventies, CSAD held a vital subset of staff and students who together were responsible for formidable critical opposition to the art education model's perceived compliance with the market definition of the art object and its reliance on the centrality of the author. The Art and Language collective's critical agenda was to shift focus beyond the material paradigm and to construct an education capable of reflecting and promoting conceptual practice. The 70s administration of CSAD repelled this self conscious overturn of the traditional material/author-centric regime. This unyielding stand, common through regional art schools at that time, created a network of opposing force which became part of the wider counter culture of the decade.The symposium will look at the significant role that regional art schools played in the art education narrative and examine how, if at all, the art education institution can function as a site of self-organisation, agitation and change. It will be held at the Herbert and free to attend.Following, is the list of invited speakers, most of which have confirmed, dates pending.Terry Atkinson, Artist and Founder of Art and Language.Neil Mulholland, Director of the Centre of Visual & Cultural Studies. Edinburgh College of Art.Simon Bell, Senior Lecturer Design and Visual Arts, CSAD.Sally Tallant, Head of Programmes, Serpentine Gallery, London.Neil Cummings, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Art, University of the Arts London.Francis McKee, Curator, Writer and Director of Centre of Contemporary Art, GlasgowLisa Tickner, Professor, Courtauld Institute of Art, London.John Reardon, Founder of Artschool UK and Lecturer in Politics, GoldsmithsAnnie Fletcher, Independent Art Critic and Curator.The proceedings and papers from the symposium, along with a reflective article by the chair Professor Steve Dutton, will be published in January 2011 and be distributed world-wide to major and marginal educational establishments, art galleries, museums and public libraries. It will take the format of a free newspaper.All Best, Sadie

Desire to talk about teaching as part of the MFA programme.Could be driven by the idea that it is a means to an end? (Will I get a job?)Also could be related to the promotion of the creative economy in the past 15 years (I will generate my own structure, I am my job).There’s a lot of confusion about what this might mean? It could simply mean examining how things are done now – looking at the present pedagogical governance.

SCQF is not an educational programme, it is merely a framework for internal assessment. It isabout the development of abilities rather than about access tolearning. It favours the modular approach which limits content to a set of prescribed aspects which in turn are divided into a selection of bits of knowledge which can be ‘learned’ and then assessed to suit a uniform bureaucratic framework.

It offers the appearance of competence in the image of a tick-box grid, without the substance of genuine ideas. This is fundamentally anti-democratic. By reducing education to a network of arbitrarily prescribed assessment mechanisms, it deprives all but the already privileged of access to their birthright to the world of knowledge and ideas. It is the educational system for the global economy. Many leading figures in the Scottish Qualifications Authority have business backgrounds. They view education as a product and teachers as employees who must sell and ‘deliver’ it to customers regardless of its intrinsic worth. The assessment process becomes an accounts system.

It’s clear that the managerialism is failing – generates a false sense of security.Increased costs of ‘compliance’ have brought eca to its knees (also gross financial mismanagement too!)Rather than sit around and moan about this – it seems better to act, to take advantage of the confusion.

Davie, G. E. (1961) The democraticintellect: Scotlandand her universities in the nineteenth century,Edinburgh, Edinurgh University Press.Davie, G. E. (1986) The crisis of the democraticintellect: the problem of generalism and specialisation in twentieth-century Scotland, Edinburgh, Polygon.Principle of the Democratic Intellect – Scots solidarism…. Present this as a philosophical and political position.George Elder Davie, in The Democratic Intellect (1961) charts the gradual extinction in the Scottish universities of a type of higher education which encouraged breadth of study and, through the compulsory study of philosophy, a concern with theory and ideas. For these thinkers, the critical role of education can only properly be fulfilled through engagement with the wider community; and, indeed, part of the meaning of Davie’s ideal of ‘critical intellectualism’ is the need for dialogue between the learned and unlearned (see Beveridge and Turnbull 1989 1997).Holyrood must formulate a cultural strategy that is more appropriate to the scale, demographics and geographies of Scotland just as Westminster needs to formulate a post-British strategy specifically for England and Wales.In recognition that ordinary Scots are sovereign in their own land, and of what Robert Burns called ‘Nature’s social union’, Holyrood should take its lead from the cellular-like organisation of Scotland’s indies. An appropriate model would be therefore be one that is bottom-up, federal, socially democratised and smaller in scale than, say, a comparable cultural strategy for Greater London would be.

For those voluntarily taking part in these sessions, the educational process is the creative process. We want to develop what we need in as a group; we want to open up what people need to know to make it possible for things to happen. With this in mind there are two key questions that we kept coming back to: PRO-AM: What constitutes ‘professional practice’ – is this simply a matter for ‘professionals’? How might ‘amateurism’ and ‘professionalism’ better inform one another? SELF-LEARNING: We are concerned to develop ordinary people’s possibilities to function as social subjects and uphold the significance of self-learning. Developing the idea of The Democratic Intellect in relation to Jacques Ranciere’sIgnorant Schoolmaster (1991), how do we ‘teach what we don't know’? In ways that might engage (radicalise) the wider community?So - we do not proceed from the position that we know what best practice is; we are, rather, motivated by aiding speculation on what it might be.

We have a space, C02 – they use it for their own work and for project work. (Mixture of theory and practice students)MFA meet to collectively examine the same question that is set (an an assessed task) for undergraduate students: Design your own 'art school'. Taking the lecture and your own research into account, what practices would you include, and why? What kind of student do you envisage? What qualities and skills would they need to acquire in your institution?Note that none of this assessed or in any way required of the MFA students – it’s entirely their own choice and they decide what to look at/do….At the moment, the group has decided that it wants to explore existing models or ‘dead’ models – to bring them back to life. This is due to a sense that the ‘new institutionalism’ and the ‘educational turn’ are always very future focused and therefore tend to produce consensus via scenario planning. Playing around with older models is related to the jamming aesthetic of of hypotechnology (‘redundant’ tech being recycled and reused in new ways).

Many of the students, having grown up online, are very interested in the cybernetics of the 1950s and 60s as well as wireless (radio as a pre-internet). The suggestions for what to examine in their action based research are led by this. We all suggest models to examine and either test them out before we investigate them further or vice versa (not concerned with ‘authenticity’, more with how to use these ideas as tools in the present).

Brian Eno in the picture.To recap, we spoke about the Groundcourse, a two year foundation that ran at Ipswich School of Art from 1961 onwards.

The discussion focused on its impact upon online learning environments, cybernetic art and some of Roy Ascott's more utopian predictions regarding the world wide web (what he called 'telematic' art). One of the main ideas ofthe Groundcourse that interested the MFAwas the concept of the 'irritant'. This, for them, involves introducing something that will facilitate self-consciousness in learning (sand in the vaseline). This is designed to enable ‘learning from the ground up. On theGroundcourse, students spent ten weeks of their second year living out a character contra to their own. I think that we can consider this as an experiment in which everyone calibrates the conditions for themselves:"The Groundcourseemphasising behavioral change as a founding principle for enabling creativity, utilized the enactment of new personalities as educational strategy." ground: The Enablement of Creativity in a Metaverse - Art Education in a metaverse: groundThis now has resonance with the common use of avatars in online games and chatrooms (there's a SecondLife version of the Groundcourse called ground)

We also discussed how some of theseexperiments don't require computers or early computational equipment – they are recurring leitmotifs in practice.For example, the contra experiment is similar to other doubles in the arts, such as the idea of Bunberrying (from Oscar Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Earnest', on now at the Lyceum in Edinburgh). [Students went to see this] Also Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies (1975) 'reverse an axiom' card (Eno, as we’ve just seen, was a student on the Groundcourse),

We also discussed the character George Costanza 'Doing the Opposite' in Seinfeld. The easiest way to understand this is to watch this clip from Seinfeld:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUvKE3bQlYSo,

Explain…the paradox..if you want to participate in the next session, then, for the next few weeks I propose that we all re-enact this element of the Groundcourse. For either a day or half a day (only, no need for more than this) in your life in the next fortnight, invent a character 'opposite' or contra to your own and role play this. If you want to be in studio for this, I've booked out the Black Box this week. You could try to make the opposite of your work in there, for example. You can do it at any time of course (alone or in public). The contra character is entirely of your own invention.

Don't tell anyone when you are going into the character and stick with it for either half a day or a whole day, otherwise the experiment will fail. Once everyone is back from London we can meet to see what happened.... (I will give you a good philosophy text to read on this episode of Seinfeld just before we meet....)They are doing this just now – had some crits with them, not sure if they are in character or not (nor they of me). It’s pretty confusing.

Edinburgh Arts – and Strategy Get Arts Beuys’ performance of ‘Celtic’ in Studio C01 at eca (next door to C02). Edinburgh Arts – Poorhouse works in Edinburgh 1972 also very important in this context.Archives in Edinburgh (big Demarco retrospective is about to open) and some students at Tate/RCA today to read:Linda Morris;1971 to 1973M.A. by Thesis at the RCA on Art Education & Art: Three Models: Beuys, Art, & Language, Nova Scotia Press.

There is a pressing need for a public meeting points for citizens collectively concerned with the cultural vitality of their cities, a space that can act as host to visitors from beyond the city walls. Not just for artists, not just run by artists for artists.I have been working with Big Things on the Beach to extend ourcollaborative relationship to establish the Public Art House,operating as an open source, accessible, independent, participatory organisation. Extending the aims and ambitions of BTOtB’s Public Art House (a former public bar in which residents could meet to engage with BTOtB’s programme) and ecaSoA’s ‘Out of Site’ course (wherein students are asked to propose speculative projects for BTOtB) and the objectives of ‘OldSkool’ - the Public Art House would be a ‘provisional’ body that is able to change rapidly in response to emerging conditions. We envisage that the Public Art House will be a shared resource that enables a common focus for other small not-for-profit artsand community organisations. Based in Portobello, Edinburgh we envisage the Public Art House as a creative commons that will enable us to rejuvenate learning as a means to rule ourselves as we should, and can best do. Our vision of the Public Art House embodies the richness and inclusive international ambition of much of the visual arts ecology Scotland enjoys now, one that has generated a confidence formed and structured around a unity of social interests.

NB – In the context of today ------ Many of the founders of BTOTB are retired, they are pensioners. They are radicalised, their chair headed many poverty action groups. They will, perhaps, radicalise the next generation of students – they certainly want to engage with the debate around their legacy.They are a well of useful knowledge and want to get things done – so they are valuable allies and advocates for artists and educators. They need to pool their resources and resist the current ideological attack of the public sphere coming from the British Coalition Government in Westminster – to present the Scottish people with a clear alternative to Con/Lib/Lab neoliberalism(civil war / war of the civic). This political action / agitation incarnate.Scotland has it’s own say in these matters – it can raise tax by up to 3p

Our proposal concerns not simply how artists might learn to facilitate the participation of others, but how this participation might in turn facilitate a collective or ‘public’ approach to learning and cultural production. ecaSoA and BTOtB share an understanding that the value of art lies in the cultural capital accrued through participation. Cultural capital is generated in the public realm, where experiences and community are valued rather than ‘objects’. Art objects are meaningful here as nodes in a socially oriented economy. Without this ritualisation of cultural practice, there is no art. For us, then, ‘public art’ is an educational process that produces public space and time, and public teaching methods are a democratic exercise of power.

So conceived, aspiring artists require more than the means to undertake extensive fieldwork and participatory observation in ‘live’ situations. This seems to us a too narrowly conceived model of ‘professionalism’ one that might serve only to instrumentalise art in the service of governmentality. ‘Artists’ and ‘lay peoples’ have equal potential to function as social subjects and so should develop the possibilities of art, education, learning and social justice together. Engaging the realm of creative education beyond conventional studio-conservatoire-gallery environments is therefore critical for artists and their publics.In this we are, in part, influenced by the German Kunstverein gallery system, citizens' initiatives that enable emancipation through public participation in art. A particularly relevant model is the New Society for Fine Arts (NGBK) in Berlin-Kreuzberg wherein members submit their own projects and form working groups. Upon completion the individual projects are dissolved and the organisation moves onto a new project. The local area has similar organisations such as the Workers Ed and The Gothenburg member’s pub that are good models (as well as the ARIs in the city).

We are interested in how the Public Art House itself invites new forms of organisational thinking and engagement beyond its own operational structure (a feedback loop). On the one hand, this relates to the focus of the Public Art House in relation to its Edinburgh context. Edinburgh boasts a range of arts organisations, from artist-run and led workshops, galleries and studios to national galleries. Many of these institutions offer a specialist social sphere for specific media and approaches including Tapestry (Dovecot), Photography (Stills), Sculpture (ESW), Printmaking (EPS) and Intermedia (New Media Scotland). While there are a number of public art commissioning agents in Edinburgh, the Capital does not, however, provide a specific discursive locus wherein ‘public art’ can flourish. The Public Art House is one of way of ensuring that those who are interested in this field actively generate new critical and institutional contexts for art. The Public Art House requires participants to engage with the ‘field’ of public art, that is, with history and theory about practice as well with practice; to think and act. The Public Art House is not simply a new arts organisation, it is an institutional primer. Potentially it is the MFA course – what happens there will write the MFA’s new ‘learning outcomes’ [which we have to have if we are to continue as an HEI) and in turn will influence Big Things on the Beach’s programme.In being organised by a community of learners rather than artist or curator led, the Public Art House proposes a dynamic approach to knowledge that combines the skills and competencies of a number of participants in relation to a broad range of creative, cultural and historical contexts in ways that are speculative, technical, philosophical, social and economic. Independent culture is one of the things that Scots excel at and that is encouraged –– by the solidarism enshrined in post-Reformation Scotland’s institutions, in its Roman law and in its pioneering universally free education. Public Art House will keep education free in Scotland.