What is Artist Pedagogy? Symposium
The University of the Arts Helsinki has put Artist Pedagogy at the centre of its research strategy, and this symposium brings together researchers from the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki to introduce aspects of their ongoing research and work in this area.
Convened by the Academy of Fine Arts, The University of the Arts Helsinki
Venue: Auditorium 1, Theatre Academy, The University of the Arts Helsinki (Haapaniemenkatu 6, Helsinki)
How do artists teach artists in art schools and beyond; are there aspects of the pedagogies and other approaches employed which cannot be explained by existing educational theory; how might we understand the diversity of experiences and approaches in art schools; is it possible to find consensus within or across the institutions in which this teaching takes place; and how can we best set out to explore these questions
The University of the Arts Helsinki has put Artist Pedagogy at the centre of its research strategy, and this symposium brings together researchers from the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki to introduce aspects of their ongoing research and work in this area. These presentations will be coupled with time for public debate and a keynote speech.
Presenters
Marika Orenius: Lecturer of Art Pedagogy
Heli Kauppila, University Lecturer, Head of University Pedagogical Studies and Arts Teacher’s Pedagogical Studies
Frank Brümmel: Lecturer in Sculpture and PhD Candidate
Luis Guerra: University Researcher in Artist Pedagogy
Timothy Smith: University Researcher in Artist Pedagogy
Magnus Quaife: Professor of Artist Pedagogy
Jaana Erkkilä-Hill: Vice Rector for Research
Please read abstracts below!
Program
10:00 Coffee
10:20 Welcome
10:30 Presentation 1: Magnus Quaife
10:50 Presentation 2: Frank Brümmel
11:10 Presentation 3: Marika Orenius & Heli Kauppila
11:40 Round table 1 (to include questions from the public)
12:10 Lunch Break (not provided)
13:10 Presentation 4: Timothy Smith
13:30 Presentation 5: Luis Guerra
13:50 Roundtable 2 (to include questions from the public)
14:10 Keynote: Jaana Erkkilä-Hill
Erkkilä-Hill will strongly argue that practicing artists as educators and artistic researchers have a profoundly different approach towards teaching than formally qualified art educators. The pedagogical method and practice springs from the experiential knowledge that can be defined also as artistic thinking. Her aim is to present several case studies as examples of how visual dialogue in artist-led teaching can be a pedagogical method, and how it can be applied to different levels of teaching. She will also concentrate on the future orientations and societal issues of artist pedagogy and examine questions on equality, diversity and ethics in artist pedagogy.
15:10 Questions and public debate
16:00 Close
Jaana Erkkilä-Hill
Bio
Jaana Erkkilä-Hill is the Vice Rector for Research at the University of the Arts Helsinki. She also holds a Professorship in Fine Art at the University of Lapland. She graduated with Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki and a Doctor of Arts from Aalto University. She is the second Vice President of the Society of Artistic Research since 2020.
Her research interests lie in artistic research in the field of artistic thinking and artist pedagogy. In addition to her academic career, she is active as an artist working on contemporary fine art print making and installations. Her work is held in several public and private collections.
Abstracts
Luis Guerra
It is a Precarious Enterprise, in Perpetual Danger of Falling Apart: on Artist Pedagogy
This presentation considers the actions of reading and making drawings. The presenter will invite those in the audience to become readers of a small theater piece.
During the process, other members of the same audience will draw.
The proposal considers the necessity of arguing pedagogy from the so-called artistic means but without considering the exhaustion of the issue through them.
The performative activity of pedagogy, composed through a network of relationships, supposes the necessity of a time-based practice plastic enough to change itself in the process (lines of flights).
It considers valuable a “reflection-in-action approach,” which means that the testing taking place can operate as a laboratory and, as such, an absolute failure. This presentation seeks to unfold the potential of what I call “operative losses,” mechanisms that work without us noticing the reverberances to happen perhaps someday.
The drawings and the text will be published on my website first and then in a future book in progress under the title of Gestural Philosophy.
Timothy Smith
Arts pedagogy as touching upon the lived experience of diverse bodyminds
This presentation will consider how students along the broad spectrum of diverse bodyminds navigate and negotiate their artmaking practices and processes in higher arts education. The term diverse bodyminds encompasses the complexities of student identification along the spectrum of neurotypical/body-typical to neurodivergent/body-divergent. This presentation will specifically ask how teachers can respond to these lived experiences, and cultivate approaches toward ‘cripping’ curriculum toward greater equity and access for students across diverse bodyminds. As a conclusion, this presentation will theorize how teaching and learning toward diverse bodyminds might reimagine how artmaking itself could be understood as a neurodivergent or body-divergent mode of expression and experience. It moves beyond considering art as ‘thinking differently’ or ‘moving differently’ (etc.), and instead cultivates a conception of art as touching upon the lived experience of diverse bodyminds.
Magnus Quaife
The Art School Exception
It is not uncommon to encounter exceptionalist claims about fine art education at university level, it transforms, it opens up, it develops uniquely critical thinkers. But it is less common to find any meaningful explanation of how the education of artists by artists leads to these outcomes let alone an unpicking of the veracity of these claims. In this presentation Magnus Quaife will begin by looking at some of these claims and then turn to various established pedagogical theories from of adult education Mezirow to Wenger to suggest that typically in higher education students are expected to become socialised within the cultures of a specific field (as well as more broadly in society), but that perhaps uniquely, at undergraduate level at least, Art School asks the students to reinvent that culture. Quaife will claim this is an important aspect of artist pedagogy, but also one that may be a route of the uncertainty and doubt that can be difficult for student artists to overcome.
Frank Brümmel
Grey Energy and Non-didactics in Artists Pedagogy?
The term Grey Energy is lent from the field of architecture where it describes energy, that is already invisible inherent in materials, built structures. Based on the idea of grey energy this presentation will show on the example of the Fair Sculpture project, how such already inherent energies can be localized in institutional structures and used differently. As also how such a model might be used for the teaching of students. Fair Sculpture is an inter-generational and multidisciplinary artistic community project consisting of two branches, in which participation is free for participants. One branch is a weekly afternoon school for kids and youngsters in the facilities of the Academy of Fine Arts and the Theatre Academy in Helsinki (Sörnäinen Campus). The second is a residency branch, where artists are invited to hold an art residency in a school outside of Helsinki, outside the Capitol area.
On a parallel trajectory the notion of non-didactics will be used to lead to a conclusion that might allow to enrich the student-teacher relationship and works as an invitation to the student to get in contact with the world, by capturing attention, that offers intellectual engagement and is not based on learning outcomes.
Marika Orenius and Heli Kauppila
Pedagogy of Uncertainty Through Being, Walking and Pausing Together
What happens before your own experience and knowledge becomes pedagogy?
As a possibility to examine uncertainties of teaching and learning, we suggest, lingering in time and space and pausing in the presence. Through these exercises, we will explore how our own artistic practice and embodied experience can foster connections to our pedagogical work.
During this interactive session we will explore the many facets of staying, quieting and slowing down as part of teaching and learning in the arts. This session suggests different notions of being and doing together as a phase in a learning process. In our workshop we invite you to explore with us: How can slowing down help us attune to each other and to our surroundings and form connections in the moment? How do we form relationships with the space and relationships with each other in that space?
An uncertain pedagogical intensity is formed when students and teachers interact in a shared space. Awareness of one’s own personal and corporeal experiences can guide towards attuning not only to meet others but also yourself. While not-knowing is a complex concept with a variety of meanings in different fields of arts, it can mean, for example, a shared state of being where teachers and students encounter each other. Drawing on their own lived experience and artistic processes, they engage with each other and related to their own work, sharing and learning.
Making art requires the acknowledging the personal experiences, that is, accessing emotions and desires as well as one’s past and future. Together they produce a paradoxical sense of corporeal presence. It is not only a matter of tuning in but slowing down in the space. We suggest that this space of not-knowing is a way towards learning. This session invites to participate and engage with the pedagogical dimensions that remain uncertain.
Convened by the Academy of Fine Arts, The University of the Arts Helsinki
Venue: Auditorium 1, Theatre Academy, The University of the Arts Helsinki (Haapaniemenkatu 6, Helsinki)
How do artists teach artists in art schools and beyond; are there aspects of the pedagogies and other approaches employed which cannot be explained by existing educational theory; how might we understand the diversity of experiences and approaches in art schools; is it possible to find consensus within or across the institutions in which this teaching takes place; and how can we best set out to explore these questions
The University of the Arts Helsinki has put Artist Pedagogy at the centre of its research strategy, and this symposium brings together researchers from the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki to introduce aspects of their ongoing research and work in this area. These presentations will be coupled with time for public debate and a keynote speech.
Presenters
Marika Orenius: Lecturer of Art Pedagogy
Heli Kauppila, University Lecturer, Head of University Pedagogical Studies and Arts Teacher’s Pedagogical Studies
Frank Brümmel: Lecturer in Sculpture and PhD Candidate
Luis Guerra: University Researcher in Artist Pedagogy
Timothy Smith: University Researcher in Artist Pedagogy
Magnus Quaife: Professor of Artist Pedagogy
Jaana Erkkilä-Hill: Vice Rector for Research
Please read abstracts below!
Program
10:00 Coffee
10:20 Welcome
10:30 Presentation 1: Magnus Quaife
10:50 Presentation 2: Frank Brümmel
11:10 Presentation 3: Marika Orenius & Heli Kauppila
11:40 Round table 1 (to include questions from the public)
12:10 Lunch Break (not provided)
13:10 Presentation 4: Timothy Smith
13:30 Presentation 5: Luis Guerra
13:50 Roundtable 2 (to include questions from the public)
14:10 Keynote: Jaana Erkkilä-Hill
Erkkilä-Hill will strongly argue that practicing artists as educators and artistic researchers have a profoundly different approach towards teaching than formally qualified art educators. The pedagogical method and practice springs from the experiential knowledge that can be defined also as artistic thinking. Her aim is to present several case studies as examples of how visual dialogue in artist-led teaching can be a pedagogical method, and how it can be applied to different levels of teaching. She will also concentrate on the future orientations and societal issues of artist pedagogy and examine questions on equality, diversity and ethics in artist pedagogy.
15:10 Questions and public debate
16:00 Close
Jaana Erkkilä-Hill
Bio
Jaana Erkkilä-Hill is the Vice Rector for Research at the University of the Arts Helsinki. She also holds a Professorship in Fine Art at the University of Lapland. She graduated with Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki and a Doctor of Arts from Aalto University. She is the second Vice President of the Society of Artistic Research since 2020.
Her research interests lie in artistic research in the field of artistic thinking and artist pedagogy. In addition to her academic career, she is active as an artist working on contemporary fine art print making and installations. Her work is held in several public and private collections.
Abstracts
Luis Guerra
It is a Precarious Enterprise, in Perpetual Danger of Falling Apart: on Artist Pedagogy
This presentation considers the actions of reading and making drawings. The presenter will invite those in the audience to become readers of a small theater piece.
During the process, other members of the same audience will draw.
The proposal considers the necessity of arguing pedagogy from the so-called artistic means but without considering the exhaustion of the issue through them.
The performative activity of pedagogy, composed through a network of relationships, supposes the necessity of a time-based practice plastic enough to change itself in the process (lines of flights).
It considers valuable a “reflection-in-action approach,” which means that the testing taking place can operate as a laboratory and, as such, an absolute failure. This presentation seeks to unfold the potential of what I call “operative losses,” mechanisms that work without us noticing the reverberances to happen perhaps someday.
The drawings and the text will be published on my website first and then in a future book in progress under the title of Gestural Philosophy.
Timothy Smith
Arts pedagogy as touching upon the lived experience of diverse bodyminds
This presentation will consider how students along the broad spectrum of diverse bodyminds navigate and negotiate their artmaking practices and processes in higher arts education. The term diverse bodyminds encompasses the complexities of student identification along the spectrum of neurotypical/body-typical to neurodivergent/body-divergent. This presentation will specifically ask how teachers can respond to these lived experiences, and cultivate approaches toward ‘cripping’ curriculum toward greater equity and access for students across diverse bodyminds. As a conclusion, this presentation will theorize how teaching and learning toward diverse bodyminds might reimagine how artmaking itself could be understood as a neurodivergent or body-divergent mode of expression and experience. It moves beyond considering art as ‘thinking differently’ or ‘moving differently’ (etc.), and instead cultivates a conception of art as touching upon the lived experience of diverse bodyminds.
Magnus Quaife
The Art School Exception
It is not uncommon to encounter exceptionalist claims about fine art education at university level, it transforms, it opens up, it develops uniquely critical thinkers. But it is less common to find any meaningful explanation of how the education of artists by artists leads to these outcomes let alone an unpicking of the veracity of these claims. In this presentation Magnus Quaife will begin by looking at some of these claims and then turn to various established pedagogical theories from of adult education Mezirow to Wenger to suggest that typically in higher education students are expected to become socialised within the cultures of a specific field (as well as more broadly in society), but that perhaps uniquely, at undergraduate level at least, Art School asks the students to reinvent that culture. Quaife will claim this is an important aspect of artist pedagogy, but also one that may be a route of the uncertainty and doubt that can be difficult for student artists to overcome.
Frank Brümmel
Grey Energy and Non-didactics in Artists Pedagogy?
The term Grey Energy is lent from the field of architecture where it describes energy, that is already invisible inherent in materials, built structures. Based on the idea of grey energy this presentation will show on the example of the Fair Sculpture project, how such already inherent energies can be localized in institutional structures and used differently. As also how such a model might be used for the teaching of students. Fair Sculpture is an inter-generational and multidisciplinary artistic community project consisting of two branches, in which participation is free for participants. One branch is a weekly afternoon school for kids and youngsters in the facilities of the Academy of Fine Arts and the Theatre Academy in Helsinki (Sörnäinen Campus). The second is a residency branch, where artists are invited to hold an art residency in a school outside of Helsinki, outside the Capitol area.
On a parallel trajectory the notion of non-didactics will be used to lead to a conclusion that might allow to enrich the student-teacher relationship and works as an invitation to the student to get in contact with the world, by capturing attention, that offers intellectual engagement and is not based on learning outcomes.
Marika Orenius and Heli Kauppila
Pedagogy of Uncertainty Through Being, Walking and Pausing Together
What happens before your own experience and knowledge becomes pedagogy?
As a possibility to examine uncertainties of teaching and learning, we suggest, lingering in time and space and pausing in the presence. Through these exercises, we will explore how our own artistic practice and embodied experience can foster connections to our pedagogical work.
During this interactive session we will explore the many facets of staying, quieting and slowing down as part of teaching and learning in the arts. This session suggests different notions of being and doing together as a phase in a learning process. In our workshop we invite you to explore with us: How can slowing down help us attune to each other and to our surroundings and form connections in the moment? How do we form relationships with the space and relationships with each other in that space?
An uncertain pedagogical intensity is formed when students and teachers interact in a shared space. Awareness of one’s own personal and corporeal experiences can guide towards attuning not only to meet others but also yourself. While not-knowing is a complex concept with a variety of meanings in different fields of arts, it can mean, for example, a shared state of being where teachers and students encounter each other. Drawing on their own lived experience and artistic processes, they engage with each other and related to their own work, sharing and learning.
Making art requires the acknowledging the personal experiences, that is, accessing emotions and desires as well as one’s past and future. Together they produce a paradoxical sense of corporeal presence. It is not only a matter of tuning in but slowing down in the space. We suggest that this space of not-knowing is a way towards learning. This session invites to participate and engage with the pedagogical dimensions that remain uncertain.