Andover O2 shop,
The Chantry Centre
January 3rd to 31st
A Collective Artist Residency
Statement of Practice: Unmaking as a Reimagining Practice
My practice is increasingly concerned with unmaking—not as an act of destruction, but as a
methodology that resists the dominant narratives of capitalism, which equate progress with
accumulation, productivity, and overconsumption. Unmaking as a concept investigated by a group of environmental scientists based at Utrecht University (Netherland), led by Giuseppe Feola, inspired my proposal. For Feola it is about rethinking ‘alternative ways of living, working and interacting with our environment that do not fit with how our current capitalist society’ (2019).
Drawing from my PhD research in Creative Pedagogies I see un-making as a means for de-schooling art. I find myself returning to making with my hands—not just thinking with my head, to investigate more-than-human entanglements. I am craving a tactile engagement with materials—a return to land, territories, trace, and animal matter that inspired my previous installation works*, but in a new environment that unsettles my assumptions and transforms this experience acknew.
My current teaching practice seems removed from these concerns when happening between 4 walls. The pedagogical exchange in which teachers engage when chasing the grades becomes empty (another form of capitalist driven outcome).
During Many Words for Snow, my practice will ask, how can we de-school art and continue to provide creative activities for all? Can an art practice presented as research into the self and into the world, open new ecologies of teaching and learning?
Can we reimagine pedagogies of becoming together in the space of the O2?
During January, I will showcase some of the pieces that so far have emerged from my un-making practice to engage in conversation with the O2 space, the public and visiting artists. My work will be presented, un-made, reformed and rediscussed, a means to reimagine my artistic journey.
For many words for snow, I am entering this unknown space, with the expectation that my practice, and the human and more-than-human encounters, during the event, will guide me to reimagine the next part of my life as an artist-teacher-researcher. I will invite other artist-teachers to join me in this process of reflecting on the impact and directions of our practices.
Keywords: Assemblages, Creative Pedagogy, More-than-human, Post-materialism, Post-human, Unmaking.
*A Thousand Sheep Project (2013), and Confessions 2015. https://athousandsheep.blogspot.com/
Comments
Post a Comment