Intertwining Histories's contents tagged with "Geneva/Zurich"

Symposium in Zurich at Shedalle

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 21:16:04 +0000

The symposium intertwining hi/stories of arts education took place in June 2018 in Zürich, Switzerland. The symposium invited students, art educators, researchers and cultural producers to reflect on the histories of education in and through art.

Each day of the symposium started with a participatory activation of the Un/Chrono/Logical Timeline. Results of each session were documented and displayed in the space. During first two days of the symposium local guests and invited international members of the intertwining hi/stories cluster gave lectures on different subjects under the common theme «Arts Education and Coloniality». The lectures section was concluded by a panel discussion «Making Time for intertwining hi/stories in Swiss Arts Education». On the third day of the symposium the public was invited to challange gathered knowleges and hi/stories participating in a variety of open parcours workshop sessions with a common theme of «Travels And Tensions Of Critical Pedagogies».

Last two days of the symposium were dedicated to local students of Master in Arts Education. In the form of closed workshops students could explore more in-depth the recurring themes of the symposium and produce their own interpretations and conclusions in forms of collages, photographs, video recordings, poems, silk-screen prints and others.

For invited intertwining hi/stories members the symposium was an opportunity to try out drafts of their Learning Units.

→ See the whole programme here.

Photos: Maja Renn

Symposium: intertwining hi/stories of arts education

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 08:52:06 +0000

intertwining hi/stories
of arts education

Public Symposium: Friday 1st – Sunday 3rd of June, 2018
Class for MA students: Friday 1st – Tuesday 5th of June, 2018

Shedhalle, Rote Fabrik
Seestr. 295, Zürich

The symposium invites students, art educators, researchers and cultural producers to reflect on the histories of education in and through art. The symposium emphasizes the fact that historiography in arts education means referring to a plurality of hi/stories as perceived from different geopolitical perspectives. Presenting international and Swiss historical case studies, the aim of the gathering is to discuss: how are these hi/stories, their relations and intertwinings relevant for the development of current practice in arts education?

Researchers working on arts education histories and their global connections and relations in the framework of the project intertwining hi/stories of arts education will present and discuss their case studies in lectures and workshops. A panel with lecturers from Swiss universities will discuss the relevance of historical knowledge in international perspectives for training in art education in Switzerland.

The project intertwining hi/stories of arts education aims to generate learning resources for professional development. The symposium and the class for MA students in Arts Education in Basle, Bern, Lucerne and Zurich connected to it invite participants to draw on the research for a reflection of their own practice and to experiment with a first set of learning cards in a game format.

With contributions by: Lineo Segoete, Andrea Hubin, Karin Schneider, Carla Bobadilla, Carmen Mörsch, Anna Schürch, Kitto Derrick Wintergreen, Tilo Steireif, Georges Pfründer, Heinrich Lüber, Shahaf Michaeli, microsillons (Marianne Guarino-Huet, Olivier Desvoignes), Puleng Plessie, Rangoato Hlasane, Sofia Olascoaga, Nora Landkammer, Vincent Scarth, Liepollo Moleleki

An event of the Master Art Education – Teaching Art, and the Institute for Art Education, ZhdK Zurich University of the Arts. Entrance free, registration required. Contact and inquiries: Maja Renn

DOWNLOAD FULL PROGRAMME HERE

REGISTRATION

Meet, greet and read on sunday: download readings: https://colivre.net/intertwining-histories/documents/meet-greet-and-read-on-sunday-readings

Letter to Köeler by Weber

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 20:10:42 +0000

Letter to Freire by Walter (discouragement)

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 20:08:59 +0000

Letter to Freire by Walter (schooled)

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 20:07:51 +0000

Letter to Freire by Villa-Alvarez

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 20:06:37 +0000

Letter to Freire by Vella

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 20:05:01 +0000

Letter to Freire (Tragic)

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 20:03:14 +0000

Letter to Freire (Friend)

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 20:02:37 +0000

Letter to Freire by Sundberg

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 20:01:46 +0000

Freire’s letter to Beverly Sparling

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 20:00:33 +0000

Letter to Freire by Simpson

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 19:58:11 +0000

Letter to Freire by Silva

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 19:56:30 +0000

Letter to Illich by Kaufmann and Kennedy

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 14:32:19 +0000

Freire’s letter to ?

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 09:58:35 +0000

Letter from Nora

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 08:01:36 +0000

Berlin, 23rd of september, 2017

Dear colleagues,

I am writing to you from a coffeeshop in Berlin. This saturday morning, much later than I would have wished, I finally find the time to write this letter to you before our meeting at the Vienna festival. What I want to do is give you a little bit of context information about the documents I share with you for the workshop (on colivre) and tell you about the questions I started with and the ones I have now. The two documents I shared on colivre are a text by the teacher Joachim Schneider from the early 90s who applies Freirean concepts to historical artwork (“Images educate”); and another one from the 70ies, written by a group of Italian migrants and german comrades in Frankfurt who tried to teach/learn german adapting Freire’s alphabetisation method and critically analyse this experience and its theoretical and political foundations (“Autonomy of the working class and language confusion”). Both texts were quite a revelation for me, because they constitute, each in its own way, exceptions to the rule in the german-speaking reception of Freire.

When I think about re-engaging Freire in art education, in the current context in Switzerland, I have two questions in mind: one is, how can art education address the main line of inequality in current swiss society, which is the line of racism and the division between those accepted as “swiss” and all others who live there. If Freire’s pedagogy has the struggle against oppression at its heart, this is what it needs to address in the current swiss context. So, what does re-engaging Freire mean for art education in migration society? That’s how we posed it from the start of this project in the Geneva/Zurich working group.

The second question is related to images, and we have discussed it with many of you whose research also addresses a similar point. For me, it is: What until now has inspired me most from reading Freire in my education practice is his thinking about dialogue and the pedagogical relation. Especially his musings about the need for educators to position themselves as learners, and at the same time take responsibility, about listening but rejecting neutrality, about the political in each educational setting, have been very valuable for me. But there is a kind of missing connection: in fact, Freire speaks a lot about working with images, it is a key point of his proposals for alphabetisation and conscientisation. But for my educational practice with images, this did not have any particular relevance until now. Reading about codifications in Freire, about generative themes in images and the process of conscientisation related to their decoding, I have somehow ambivalent thoughts: I feel this has a lot to do with what I want to do with images in art education, at the same time there is a kind of estrangement. Looking at the images by Brennand, the ones in that are still the main example for “generative images” I find them highly contradictory for the goals that they should fulfil. The kind of folk art realism seems on the one hand too easy, too obvious to decode. On the other hand, I have trouble decoding those elements that are not realist, but rather ornamental (like the trees in many images, that instead of having one root and one top become an ornament with roots on both sides). I cannot make sense of them (except as a decision of style), and Freire does not explain them. Rather, and here is my second estrangement, Freire explains very clear messages that should be decoded in the images. Learners should recognize that everything made by man (sic) is culture, and everything else is nature, for example. How can the decodification have such a clear outcome that Freire knows beforehand if the idea is that learners decode the images? What happens if they read them differently? Grimaldo Rengifo,[1] an educator writing from his experiences in alphabetization campaigns in the Peruvian Andes, describes this as the main problem in practice with the method. The learners’ readings, coming from an Andean epistemology, that instead of dividing nature and culture made “illogical” connections between these spheres, did not have room in the decoding exercise, at the time he regarded them as signs of the “magical” consciousness that has to be overcome by critical consciousness. For Rengifo, this is the reason why in terms of emancipation which has to be decolonization, their work failed. It continued to be colonizing in the sense that it privileged enlightenment rationality and excluded indigenous epistemologies. This critique comes from an entirely different context than my own; but it gives foundation to my estrangement. The images by Brennand and Freire’s explanation of the codifications stand both for a simple reading of predefined messages in realist depictions AND are more than that, containing “magical” (to take up Freire’s language) elements like trees with two roots, and often selecting image content that has reflexive elements for the viewer (for example the one showing a “culture circle” looking at an image). The idea of codifications coming from research on the learners’ everyday experience and their joint decodification, and how Freire writes about it, clearly goes beyond an instrumental use of pictures as messages. But in practice, it seems that the images served this purpose. Isn’t this exactly the point where we art educators could step in? Can re-engaging Freire help to develop more exactly what I am doing when I try to discuss images with a group as a way for all of us to understand ourselves in a social and political context? And can working on the contradictions in Freire that I described help to make this work more conscious and precise?

This explanation turned out much longer than I planned it! I wanted to tell you about the questions I had in mind when I started looking through the reception of Freire’s work in the german speaking area through the publications available. I did not focus only on Switzerland, because publications and the reading available at a time is very much entangled with Germany (and Austria, although to a lesser degree). I looked at publications about working with Freire HERE between the 1970s and today, and left beside those by german speaking authors about education somewhere else, which constitute an important part of the reception in a discourse of “development” and education in the “third world”. Some preliminary thoughts from what I have read so far:

Concerning the context of migration:

The application of Freire’s pedagogical concepts to Switzerland, Germany and Austria is from the beginning very much linked to education for “guest workers”, “foreigners”, “emigrants”. From the 1970ies on, practice examples or recommendations tend to focus on migrants as learners. The systematic work of Bendit and Heimbucher (1977) titled “Learning from Freire. A new approach for pedagogy and social work”[2], for instance discusses in detail three examples of language learning and/or alphabetisation that refer to Freire: one from France (PLELV in Paris, a political organization), another one from Switzerland (a working group at Geneva University) and one from Germany (“Lernstatt”, a project of language learning in automobile factories in Germany). This testifies on the one hand, that in the time that can be called the era of instrumental “foreigner pedagogy” (following Paul Mecheril’s description of the development of pedagogical concepts dealing with migration in Germany), there was both practice and theory building that looked at power relations and had emancipation of migrants in mind. And that also in the 1990ies, when “intercultural education” as a depoliticizing concept became hegemonic for dealing with migration in education, there was a parallel practice referring to Freire. On the other hand it is symptomatic for the reception of Freire’s work here that it focuses on migrants as the ones most easily equated with the oppressed that Freire writes about. Other groups that easily come into focus are unemployed youth, people with learning disabilities, or people in psychiatric care.

There are publications that transfer Freire’s concepts for Worker’s education more generally, for example Braeuer’s book “Social constitutions of political education in Paulo Freire’s theory: A discussion of Freire’s theory and the aspect of its transferability to workers’ education in the German Federal Republic, 1985[3]). Also, there are publications that understand Freire’s work as “political alphabetisation” for students and the majority population in general (for instance in a booklet by the “Information center on the Third world” in Freiburg).[4] But while the application of alphabetization methods from Brazil to language learning for migrants in Europe seems relatively smooth, the forms of power relations in the “third” and “first” worlds and their differences/similarities are a main discussion topic in the literature in german. A seemingly influential phrasing for this relation appears in an interview of Freire with Alexander J. Seiler for the Swiss newspaper in 1972.[5] Seiler speaks of the “culture of silence” Freire describes in Brazil, and proposes: “Here, on the contrary, oppression takes the form of a culture of noise. You deal with people who are in need, in every sense – but here [bei uns], if we talk about workers in the industries in Switzerland, in Skandinavia, in the Netherlands or in Western Germany, there is not so much a material need, but a mental, psychic one, a need of consciousness that the person does not even perceive as such” (Seiler/Freire 1981 [1972], 135). The oppression in Europe is more on the “inside” (“inwendig”) than in the third word. The idea of a “culture of noise” instead of the culture of silence, although Freire immediately answers that this noise is part of what he describes as silence, because he speaks about the possibilities to be listened to, appears repeatedly in the german Freire reception. What is very seldom, is that people in Europe are openly equated to “oppressors” rather than the oppressed.[6]

In this panorama, the text “Autonomy of the working class and language confusion” from 1973 is an exception in several senses. The authorship is the first exception: it is collective, and claims to be a collaboration between migrants and majority germans. It has an aspect of self-representation. Secondly, it does not share the tone of reverence towards Freire, but evaluates his concepts strictly for the usefulness for own purposes. The fourth point is that in contrast to other texts on Freire for education with migrants it denies consequently “integration” as a goal of such learning, and the “correct use” of german language as learning outcome. It appeared in the journal “Ästhetik und Kommunikation” (Aesthetics and communication), the journal of the Institut für Experimentelle Kunst und Ästhetik (IKAe) in Frankfurt am Main. The journal understood (and still understands) itself as a left medium for political education and at the time explicitly aimed to go beyond established academia in the search of its contributors. Therefore I read the article also as an exception in the sense of what enters official publications, it may give an idea that probably beyond what is documented in publications I can access now in libraries there was another reading of Freire in more radical and self-organised circles. I would like to discuss with you, beyond the appeal of the text as a historical reference for critical learning in the context of migration: Which of the critiques of Freire they formulate are important for us now? Are they related to critiques formulated in the contexts you know? And which are based on misunderstandings, or themselves have to be criticized? And how do you interpret the collective authorship? Where is the text congruent with a group of learners and teachers writing about their experience, and where is the claim of the migrant authorship only used for a voice that is in fact the one of the german teacher?

Concerning images:

To put my impression in few words, I could say that images as an educational resource are omnipresent in the Freire reception in german, but there is a lack of reflection about them. Almost all practical examples mention that they somehow work with images, but the texts seldom show these images, and they are often not worth any more detailed description. The text “autonomy of the working class….” just described can serve as an example here: they talk about drawings of “existential themes” and about the use of photography and film, but do not provide any images. The article does have an image, but it is a caricature that does not have any close connection to the text. The most commonly used “generative images” are drawings, and collages. The mode of production varies: often, the images are produced by teachers/moderators out of their research or previous knowledge on the potential existential themes of the learners group. In other examples, producing images is part of the learning situation itself. Collages are the most used medium for that. But the way things are depicted, the medium and its qualities, are usually not written about.[7]

I have not had the time for a detailed research in the german speaking didactic journals and publications for art education, but my first impression is that there was little explicit reception Freire for art educational methods. When his work is referenced, it is as a general pedagogical orientation for emancipation. He was a reference for education on images (only not art) from early on, in “media pedagogy”. In Switzerland, for example, Arnold Fröhlich has Freire as a main reference in his proposal of critical media education and a curriculum for a new study subjects in Basel schools (1982). But what is significant is that Freire in Fröhlich’s book appears as a reference for “dialogue” and “project learning”, not for the work with images itself. The text I want to discuss with you, called “Images educate. Or how a copper engraving becomes a codification”, published in 1991 by a german school teacher (not specifically art teacher), in the current state of my research appears as an exception because it tries to apply the framework of codifications of existential situations for learners to working with historical artworks. Of course, the context once more is “interculturality” in the context of migration. I would like to discuss with you how the approach Schroeder develops relates to Freire, and to methods from art history. Are there correspondences/differences to examples you know for art education referring to Freire? And of course I am interested in discussing what we can conclude for our art education practice now.

For both texts, I uploaded translations (I did them very quickly and they are not proofread) of parts of the texts which I found most significant, which I hope can serve for this discussion. For those of you who read german, the full text is available (Autonomie....german full text; Schroeder german full text).

Sorry that this letter turned out so long – the lengths is also due to the fact that I am only systematizing my thoughts while writing, they are not conclusions but a first attempt at writing down impressions. I am very much looking forward to continue thinking together in the workshop next week.

Best wishes,

Nora

[1] Rengifo Vásquez, Grimaldo (2003). "La crianza en los andes. A propósito de Freire", in: Rengifo Vásquez, Grimaldo (Hrsg.): „La enseñanza es estar contento“. Educación y Afirmación Cultural Andina, Lima: PRATEC/ Proyecto Andino de Tecnologías Campesinas, abrufbar unter: http://www.pratecnet.org/pdfs/Enseanzaestarcontento.pdf (letzter Zugriff: 28.1.2016)

[2] Bendit, René/Heimbucher, Achim (1977). Von Paulo Freire lernen : ein neuer Ansatz für Pädagogik und Sozialarbeit, München: Juventa

[3] Braeuer, Rolf: Soziale Konstitutionsbedingungen politischen Lernens in der Theorie Paulo Freires. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Theorie Freires und dem Aspekt ihrer Übertragbarkeit auf Arbeiterbildung in der Bundesrepublik. Frankfurt: Haag und Herchen, 1985.

[4] Futterlieb, Hartmut (Hg.): Erziehung zur Solidarität. Materialien zu Paulo Freire’s politischer Alphabetisierung. Freiburg 1975.

[5] Freire, Paulo: Der Lehrer ist Politiker und Künstler: neue Texte zu befreiender Bildungsarbeit. Hamburg: rowohlt, 1981.

[6] The only text I found that talks about learning in Europe as a learning of the opressors, is by Arnold Köpcke-Duttler, from the beginning of the nineties. It speaks in a theological register about how Europe deals with asylum seekers and the forms of domination and oppression involved, and calls for a “decolonization of the mind”. The colonizers, meaning Europeans now, “must stop being colonizers”. (Köpcke-Duttler 1991: 161)

[7] I am saying this for texts from the 1970s to the 1990s; I did not look into more recent work. What needs to be mentioned here is the work of Vera Brandner, who developed a method for “generative imagemaking” with youth based on Freire (2013)

Autonomie der Arbeiterklasse und Sprachverwirrung. Deine Sprache, meine Sprache, unsere Sprache? (1973)

Thu, 21 Sep 2017 07:53:22 +0000

Emigrant "guest workers" in Frankfurt develop a critique of freire from their experience of learning/teaching German based on Freire's concepts

Autonomy of the Working Class and Language Confusion. Your language, my language, our language?

Thu, 21 Sep 2017 07:48:56 +0000

Emigrant "guest workers" in Germany develop a critique of Freire from their experience to learn/teach German based on Freire's concepts

Bilder bilden. Oder: Wie aus einem Kupferstich eine Codierung wird

Thu, 21 Sep 2017 07:42:43 +0000

Historical artwork as "codifications"

Images educate Or: How a copper engraving becomes a codification (Bilder bilden. Oder: Wie aus einem Kupferstich eine Codierung wird)

Thu, 21 Sep 2017 07:27:34 +0000

Schroeder, Joachim (1991). "Bilder bilden. Oder: Wie aus einem Kupferstich eine Codierung wird", in: Befreiung und Menschlichkeit. Texte zu Paulo Freire, München: AG SPAK, 181–192