unlearning, undoing, unmaking
Above: Following the threads of our research: Participants in the Potency and Potential UK residency at Northern College, Yorkshire, 2016
Research impulse: My specific interest here is in the application of clowning as alternative research methodology that can provoke and disrupt accepted and preconceived notions of learning. I’m concerned with interrogating arts-based research and arts pedagogy in order to disrupt dominant structures and privilege in learning institutions and their practices.
What does clowning reveal about methods of knowing and learning that might inform the way we learn in fields other than theatre?
Above: Hilary Ramsden & Angela De Castro in Zebras Crossings street interventions, Cardiff 2017
How might the elements of clowning be used as ways to develop new understandings and new ways of learning?
Above: Helping a passer-by across the street, Zebras Crossings, Cardiff, 2017
What insights about the human condition and relationships in our lifeworlds does clowning reveal that other methods of learning do not?
These questions form the basis for creating experimental methods of teaching and learning through clowning that can lead to new understandings and perspectives on contemporary themes and issues of concern to arts educators and researchers, arts practitioners and activists.
Can we ever walk in someone else’s shoes, walk in their footsteps?
Photo left: A workshop exercise, mapping the feet, to illustrate the impossibility of being able to exactly and authentically replicate someone else’s footprint, let alone thoughts, feelings and ideas
Since January 2014 I have been part of the group Queer Art Education: shifting dominant orders of identity/belonging, that looks at shifting the dominant systems of belonging through arts education. I’m currently collaborating with colleagues in Cardiff and Berlin* on research located in the intersecting and interweaving of arts-based and arts-based education processes and practices, through the lenses of intersectionality and queer theory and pedagogy. We’re using the terms ‘Unlearning’ (Spivak, 1990) and ‘Undoing’ (Butler 2004) as conceptual frameworks to problematize and address, amongst other things, the lack of awareness of colonial histories and the normalization of racism and heteronormativity.
We’re looking at un-doing canons and un-learning language and ways of communication.
“The endeavor suggests instead the idea of a „queer art education”, oriented towards (and linking both) artistic and pedagogical practices which share the aspiration to function in an anti-racist, anti-sexist and ideally also anti-capitalist way. It calls itself “queer” and not (just) “critical” because besides its anti-normative stance it is informed by post-structuralist pedagogy and as such emphasises affect, desire, vulnerability, ambiguity and contradiction in the development and realisation of its emancipatory ambition.” (from short description by Prof. Carmen Moersch, January 2014)
The clowning residency at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum was the first collaborative study of the series. Since then we have convened in small groups in Berlin to trial methods, share practices and attempt to develop shared vocabularies. Working with investigators from different countries quickly reveals issues of hegemonic Westernized thinking and undoing and unlearning these are slow, frequently painful processes fraught with failures, mistakes and misunderstandings. Trying to understand each others’ spoken languages as well as the academic languages and literature that we each employ takes time and cannot be rushed to fulfil short-term funding deadlines.
We are slowly coming up with arts-queer informed, theory- and practice-based positions, practices and methods to create spaces and times for bringing students, educators, academics, artists and activists together to share practices, knowledge and understandings of un-learning and un-making.
We’re doing more than interrupting the canon, we are questioning its very existence.
Above: Outcomes, issues and themes emerging from research meetings, Berlin, December 2019
We’re employing arts-based research methods and practices in the processes of un-learning
queering, troubling, querying and unlearning privilege
queering, troubling, querying and unlearning assumptions about the spaces & places where learning supposedly takes place,
queering, troubling, querying and unlearning established and assumed knowledges
queering, troubling, querying and unlearning hierarchical learning structures, spaces and places
queering, troubling, querying and unlearning accepted and assumed design and architecture so-called learning spaces and structures,
queering, troubling, querying and unlearning the need for dissemination and communication of knowledge
queering, troubling, querying and unlearning our desire for knowledge and to be experts, masters & mistresses of knowledge.
We envisage the continuous and systematic creation of a rhizomic network of un-learning people, theories, practices, modes and media which might produce such things as new systems & curricula, structural institutional changes, classroom toolkits, museum/gallery toolkits, mis-guides, maps, instructions, manuals, kiosks of un-learning, installations, performances, all of which contribute to undoing, unpicking, and un-learning.
Above: Disciplinary perspectives emerging from research meetings, Berlin, December 2019
The research intends to be “Tempting, ephemeral, necessary and meaningful. Earnest, with humor, (self)irony and masquarade playing a central role.” (Prof. Carmen Moersch, Jan 2014)
*Colleagues include: Prof. Carmen Moersch, Professor of Art Education at Kunsthochschule Mainz, Germany; clown Angela de Castro, Why Not Institute; Dr. Clare Kell USW CELT (Centre for Enhancement of Learning and Teaching); Dr. Sarah Crews USW Course Leader in Performance and Media; Prof. Dr. Nanna Lüth, Jun. Prof. Kunstdidaktik/Geschlechterforschung, UdK Berlin and Universität Duisburg-Essen and Danja Ernte, KontextSchule, UdK Berlin.
References:
Barrett, E. and Bolt, B., (eds). 2007 Practice as Research, Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. London/New York, IB Tauris
Brennan, Tim (1999) Guidebook: three manoeuvres in London E1/E2. London: Camerawords
Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender, USA/UK: Routledge
Davison, J. (2013). CLOWN, Readings in Theatre Practice. UK: Palgrave Macmillan
Debord, Guy (1955) Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography France: Published in
Les Lèvres Nues #6, 1955.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1992. A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone.
Estrella, K. and Forinash, M. 2007. Narrative Inquiry and Arts-Based Inquiry: Multinarrative Perspectives. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 47, 376-383.
Hargadon, A. B. 2002. Brokering knowledge: Linking learning and innovation. Research in Organizational Behavior, 24; 41-85.
Spivak, G. C. (1990) The Post-colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues USA: Psychology Press
Weick, K. E. and Sutcliffe, K. M. 2001. Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity. USA: Jossey-Bass.
Whybrow, Nicholas (2005) Street Scenes: Brecht, Benjamin & Berlin. Bristol, UK: Intellect
Continuing to develop notions of unlearning, unmaking, undoing I was Co-Investigator in the following research:
Potency and Potential
Brainstorming session notes from the residency in Sao Paulo, Brazil, September 2015
Potency & Potential of creative connections in interstitial spaces - Learning from Latin American experiences
I was Co-Investigator of this AHRC-funded project (2015 - 2017) between UK, Brazilian and Mexican artists, academics and activists, with PI Dr Anni Raw from the University of Leeds and Co-Investigator Dr. Victoria Jupp Kina from the University of Dundee. We set out to explore the atmosphere in community arts/creative workshops or spaces, and to interrogate what enables such spaces to carry the possibility of change, or to inspire people to work together for change.
We sought to bring together six communities to learn from different perspectives on how creative facilitation and arts participation can create possibilities for change. Together we created a series of collaborative research encounters, to explore the atmospheres in community arts/creative workshops or spaces, and what enables such spaces to carry the possibility of change, or to inspire people to work together for change.
Participating community members were drawn from academic, practitioner and activist communities in Brazil, Mexico and the UK. The style of the research project was 'action research' so that we were to explore the questions both through discussion and through trying out different practices, methods and methodologies together.
Above: Planning the residential with a larger team, having arrived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, September 2015
The first residency was held over two and a half days in Sao Paulo, Brazil in September 2015. With barely three days of a residential to introduce ourselves, share our practices and working methods, as primary investigators we felt under pressure to create a tight schedule before arriving at the residential. We arrived in Sao Paulo with plenty of ideas. On arrival we met with other participants and created a planning team comprising of ourselves and academic researcher Ahtziri Molina, artist and cultural activist Lorena Wolffer both from Mexico and UK artists Lou Sumner and Sarah-Jane Mason, We spent two days trying to create shared languages and vocabularies, as well as deciding how to structure the time at the residential. My main task for the residential was to catalyse and facilitate conversations using interruptions and interventions through clowning, play and improvisation, which would result in reflection and questioning.
Once gathered at the residential outside the city of Sao Paulo, we realised that more than anything, participants wanted to talk and network. We began on the first evening with initial introductions which included circle discussions where each participant began their sharing from a chosen object they placed in the space.
Above: Participants sharing their initial thoughts and reflections on the first evening of the Sao Paulo residential, Brazil, September 2015.
Above: Artist and cultural activist, Lorenna Wolffer, sharing her practice, Sao Paulo residential, Brazil, September 2015
Many of the Brazilian participants were not familiar with each other’s work and practices. Therefore they wanted a regenerating space with time for reflection, conversation and relaxation. As investigation team we had to take into consideration that we were in the positions of colonizing outsiders with agendas that were not necessarily in tune with what the Brazilian counterparts wanted or needed at that time. Our initial plans had to change.
Above: A rarity: Space and time to discuss and exchange artistic, academic and activist practices, Sao Paulo residential, Brazil, September 2015
The most successful elements of this residential were the walks and talks, the side conversations, the sharing of our everyday lives with each other, participants coming from vastly different cultures, backgrounds lifestyles and experiences. We needed to first establish trust and that meant taking time. We walked and talked, drew diagrams, painted pictures, made notes, and ate together. After the residential we managed to organise visits to each others projects and neighbourhoods in Sao Paulo before leaving Brazil.
Above: Walks, conversations, wanderings and meanderings, Sao Paulo residential, Brazil, September 2015
Above: Questions and reflections written and drawn: where to next? Sao Paulo residential, Brazil, September 2015
Six months later we met at Northern College, South Yorkshire in February 2016. In the intervening time we reflected on the impact, challenges and shortcomings of the first residency. We shared ideas on a Tumblr platform and decided to frame the residential around a question:
What elements within your work and practice experience excite you about the potential of working collaboratively and across disciplines on themes of the potential of transformative spaces?
Participants came to the residential with ideas for creating small projects and organising workshops, gatherings, games and conversations. We shared and took different roles at different times: leading/participating/observe-reflecting & discussing. We came up with three main areas of activity:
Introducing ourselves and our work to each other, for orientation, for seeking and mapping links, getting perspectives on the themes of spaces of transformation
Sharing our own practices – whoever wanted to led an activity in their own style of creating catalytic spaces; participants also shared ideas to catalyse discussions.
Large group reflections, observations and responses and discussions as well as time set aside for more informal conversations.
Above: Different activities proposed by different practitioners created different spaces and relationships, Northern College, South Yorkshire residential, February 2016.
Above and below: Making, talking, showing, participants’ processes of creating transformative spaces, Northern College, South Yorkshire residential, February 2016
On the final day we came together and created a carpet of threads and paper, mapping our intersecting interests, practices and methods in creating transfomative spaces. The action of creating this elicited further conversations, discussion, games and movements through the space.
Above: Plenary session bringing together participants and practices in action, Northern College residential, South Yorkshire, February 2016.
Our more formal findings for creating transformative spaces included:
Creating a space that is away from everyday distractions and commitments
Ensuring the space is comfortable enough to allow people to reflect (which is an activity that is not possible if individuals do not feel they can relax); however that also includes new experiences, disorientation, being stretched, and a variety of approaches or engagement styles
The necessity of building significant levels of mutual trust between those in the space, including by carefully challenging obstacles to trust: This can be achieved indirectly through collaborative creative activity, so that issues can unfold without confrontation and an ensuing loss of trust
Sharing values and passions for the aims of each others' work, and sensing each others' high levels of commitment (as a trust building measure as well as motivating factor)
Exploring concrete next steps, and sound communication mechanisms that suit people's needs and habits, in order to allow future collective action to take place.
Above: The threads and interconnecting practices of the Potency and Potential research, Northern College residential, South Yorkshire, February 2016
Contact between arts practitioners from the UK and Brazil resulted in mutual interest in understanding each others' practice and the creation of independent links between participants.
Anni Raw, Hilary Ramsden and Kelly Di Bertolli co-authored a paper/presentation: Spaces of communication, connection and language: In an interdisciplinary international multi-sector collaboration, whose language is it anyway? at the Connected Communities Early Career Researcher conference at the University of East Anglia in March 2016.
The three also presented a revised and updated version of the paper in the form of a performance/presentation: Spaces, connections and languages of artivism: Exploring the ‘potency and potential’ of transnational connections for transformation and action at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities/ESA Research Network Sociology of the Arts 9th midterm conference, at the University of Porto, Portugal in September 2016.
Brazilian theatre academic, practitioner and researcher, Kelly Di Bertolli was invited to University of South Wales to teach workshops in Theatre of the Oppressed for third year Applied Drama students and second year Improvisation students in April 2016
