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140 lines
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Sami invited Tamara de Groot, who teaches in the Arts & Culture programme at the Erasmus University College (EUC), to have a conversation with him about decentering the human in art pedagogy. In her work at EUC, she experiments with the workshop idea ‘World Building’ (based on Technofeminist notions, such as the work of Donna Haraway on multi-species entanglement and storytelling). It is this practical workshop that Tamara has with her students that Sami wanted to discuss.<br><br>
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Sami Hammana: I think I have mentioned this concept once already in the TTP (Teacher Training Programme) meetings, but I’m really fascinated by this idea of the ‘call to order’. Which is basically the idea that the moment a teacher comes into the space and says ‘ok, so, now we are going to start learning’. Right? Then the first slide of the powerpoint starts to appear on the screen etc. This [concept of the call the order, claims that this] is essentially a colonial practice. Because you are basically claiming that everything that happened before the call to order wasn’t learning. You are kind of erasing any sort of learning moment that might arise. You know, when students are talking amongst themselves etc.<br><br>
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You know, this concept sounds amazing in theory, but I find it extremely difficult to think about this in practice, you know, when you teach. It makes me kind of warry of how to start this conversation. Because if I say ‘ok now we start’, I’m kind of doing exactly that, erasing that which we had already been talking about before. <br><br>
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Tamara de Groot: Well, it is the beginning of something, but also the ending. So, how do you finish a class? Because it can be read as ‘ok, knowledge ends now’. This is it. You are done. Stop thinking now and go away and eat lunch and it doesn’t happen anymore. So I think we have already started. So there is no need to start something.<br><br>
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[SH and TG laugh]<br><br>
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TG: What I see as a huge problem, of course this counts for everything, that if the basis, the foundation, which is also the space of the entire educational system, and the entire world. If that remains the same, how can you really change something? <br><br>
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Ok, let’s say there is a class and students are waiting and you want to change this idea of stepping in as a teacher and immediately inhabiting this authoritative position. The only thing you can then do is to not enter. Because everything else, doesn’t matter how you enter, you are taking up that position already. Actually, even before you enter that classroom. This is what students expect. In that sense, I don’t think that there is a way around the way things are structured now. But I also feel that, well hopefully at least, we are in this moment of transition. Where what we can do is to become, and make students, aware that this is happening. Which partly isn’t happening yet, well for most people. Even among teachers, they do not realize that they are performing this. It is not something that they necessarily consider.<br><br>
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I think this goes for many other things as well in education, that we first have to start becoming aware of what we are doing.<br><br>
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SH: Precisely. You know, I think it is funny, that we are having this conversation right now, while we are sitting in one of the most boring classrooms in the WdKA building. <br><br>
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[SH and TG laugh] <br><br>
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But spaces like these, you know, we have previously been talking about how the interior-architecture of a classroom influences pedagogy. Spaces like these, do not help. This division of, you know, “good furniture” in the front, and tiny ones in the back.<br><br>
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TG: It is quite funny, because here, in comparison to the Erasmus University College, it is at least a lot messier. This room, you know, you can see that the tables are scattered, they are not really organised in any recognizable shape. There is some stuff in the middle and there are some random papers on the table. This is already a bit of a difference. At least the tables aren’t in an u-form.<br><br>
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SH: Yeah, yeah [laughs]<br><br>
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TG: And, there is indeed a desk, a sort of bigger table, but that is kind of in the middle of the other small tables. So, I mean like, I think. On this micro-level, we can also make changes that do really effect how the teacher and the student experience learning. This is not to say that we shouldn’t change the system in general.<br><br>
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SH: That is, unfortunately, quite a big task.<br><br>
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TG: Exactly. I’m actually curious to see how you do this, to make these moments of minor-changes. Do you do this when you teach? What kind of techniques, or tricks, do you use to make students aware of certain power-structures?<br><br>
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SH: Yeah… Well, one thing which I’ve done recently. And I’m not exactly sure whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. But, I have been really welcoming long and awkward silences in teaching.<br><br>
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TG: Hmm.<br><br>
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SH: Well, because you will always have this problem in class where you have 1, 2 or 3 really outspoken and engaged students. Which, of course, doesn’t mean that the rest isn’t engaged. But, their voices kind of overpower the confidence of these other students to say something. So, you know, whenever these students that are normally not talking as much or saying something. When they finally feel comfortable to speak, sometimes it takes a very long time, a very long time, a minute or something, to properly form a sentence. I have been really welcoming these long awkward silences and giving the space and time to these students to formulate their thoughts.<br><br>
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So this is one thing that I have learned, that could perhaps work well. But I have to say, I’m not completely convinced about this other classic thing, of ‘let’s sit in a circle on the floor’ and everything is immediately ‘flat’ and devoid of hierarchy...<br><br>
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TG: Because there is hierarchy.<br><br>
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SH: Yeah!<br><br>
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TG: Right? That is why, when I teach, I do teach. This is because students want to get something from me. I have been thinking and reading a bit about whether we as teacher are simply there to facilitate the learning process or that we actually do more. So that is not like ok, ‘we give the students the space and we sit back and relax and let them do the work’ and claim that we as teachers are not in any position to teach the students anything. They do want to learn something, and I think that the beauty in learning and teaching, is that as a teacher you do add something extra to the situation. <br><br>
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At Erasmus University we use the idea of Problem Based Learning (PBL). So it is centered around a problem and the whole pedagogical idea behind it, in the classical sense, is: if you “do it right”, this means that you won’t even need a teacher or tutor. The students go through different steps so that you essentially get rid of the teacher. Now, we use a system which is a bit more teacher-oriented, so there is a tutor there. But they try to keep out of the conversation as much as possible. Now, how people approach this is different, because you can imagine that if you have a lot of extra knowledge, that you're more inclined to intervene. But the idea is that anybody could teach any class. So you just have a kind of manual and that's how you do it. And this idea of completely deleting the teacher from this situation, I'm actually not too much a fan of. I think there is a lot that you can contribute to as a teacher, from your background. Even if it's not … But it can be… It doesn't have to be this authoritative figure dumping knowledge on, you know, a receiving crowd of students. But I do think we're quite crucial. <br><br>
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SH: Yeah for sure. And I think there's this other problem to it as well which is the problem of capital. And as soon as you pay a couple of thousand of euros for tuition fees each year. You know, for them to come into the room and you're being all vague about stuff. And everything is the same as etc. You know, the idea of ‘I'm not here, I'm not a teacher’. ‘I'm trying to be controversial and experimental’. But no, the students pay money that they need to get something out of.<br><br>
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TG: And so, what I find interesting to see, and this is also from this transdisciplinary idea of non-hierarchical relations within a collaboration is, what if I, as a teacher, have my expertise, I have my knowledge. Students, similarly, have baggage. Right? Intellectual baggage. Like they have a background they have experiences, they've read stuff and they've done things that I have not and other students haven't either. And to see the learning process more as a collaboration where everybody can contribute something, where my knowledge, as a teacher, is not more valuable than what the students can bring in. I think this is a very interesting idea to work with. This, of course, doesn't really work in lectures. You have to have a setting where everybody can be involved, and can speak, and has a voice, but then within different settings and different pedagogical approaches you could, I think, do a lot with this.
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But it's not easy. Not at all. Maybe slightly impossible, because of the structures that we're used to and these ideas of the teachers as the dumper of knowledge. <br><br>
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SH: I find it very difficult, you know, it's almost like a, like an, extremely difficult thing to think through, because if we can't even make sense of, you know, how to have the most beneficial social relationship between teaching staff and students. How are we even starting to become prepared for urgent socio-political issues that do not include humans? How do we ... How do we sort of thinking through that?
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TG: This is a whole different challenge. Because we are not used to this, or we think that we are not used to this. So I was reading ‘Being Ecological’ [Timothy Morton]. Wherein it is stated that we are … We are already ecological. Right?<br><br>
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We are way more in touch with everything in our surroundings, and the non-humans that live inside us than we think. It's more about rethinking this. But in education, how do you do this, when we're in buildings that are made to keep “nature” out. We're never outside. There are also no spiders inside, because educational buildings are usually quite well, you know, with the whole air supply stuff. Quite often, I can't even open windows.<br><br>
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SH: You have to press buttons, like on these windows. <br><br>
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TG: Exactly. Technological innovation. [laughs]
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Fresh air, well, relatively fresh air…. So, how can we do this?<br><br>
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SH: I think this is very interesting. Because I would actually, instinctively, think: well education is, in this current setting, completely removed from the current questions regarding the non-human. But for you to say that it is already highly embedded within it, although in a very unhelpful manner, then it is perhaps a good way to think about a possible reversed relationship. <br><br>
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I'm just thinking about the term ‘the Anthropocene’. It has this prefix ‘anthropos’, the human. I think that word literally says that, mankind is (or has) become an integral part of ecology, right? So I think there's a similar relationship to what you were saying about the building cutting-up, quote unquote, nature. The human is in the geology right now. The human is part of geology, although, not in a helpful manner, right? But, I mean like, I don't know what it means for any possible inclusion of non-human epistemologies. Like, how can one sort of start to think about including different forms of knowledge, which I think also means a series of different forms of languages. Because, we cannot speak the way we speak to each other right now, to let's say a tree.<br><br>
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I think there are quite interesting practices that arise, such as the practice of field-recordings, for example. Like, you know, this classic image of a person in a cargo shirt going out into an open landscape with a microphone. There are some of these aesthetic practices that are starting to arise, that could help us think through it.<br><br>
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TG: Yeah, so you see this in the arts. Because in science, I mean you can have a field recording that would just mean that there is a scientist coming from a very specific scientific-paradigm of investigating nature and creating knowledge by really instrumentalizing nature. And not listening really. Or not having a conversation with nature. And of course we have anthropology, where the object of study, or the subjects, that whole relationship is changing quite a bit. And in any type of biology, chemistry or whatever, the object of study, protons, cells or whatever. They're not part of any conversation or taken into account in that sense, the object of study. <br><br>
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But, I’d like to get back to the arts, because I think a lot more is happening there then in science. And this is why I also think that the arts are incredibly important. Also for science to see how we can we approach things differently. So, in art education. How do you see this? If you hear me speak about all kind of academics. Is there a difference? Is there more space for the non-human?<br><br>
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SH: I think so, yeah. I think that there are a few things, like specific methods of image-making, that are quite present in the arts today. One really common one, that you would see quite often, is the genre of ‘slow cinema’. So, you know, you see like a scene, like a landscape that last five minutes long. And it is excruciating to look at. You only see the leaves slowly moving. It's quite interesting to see, because, you know, contemporary art and other forms of art-practices, like graphic design etc., are all heavily interested in film. But there is almost never a human present in the films themselves.<br><br>
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TG: Although, well, somebody is making this film. <br><br>
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SH: Yeah. Somebody is pointing the lens, the camera, as an extension of their eyes, of their images. But I think there's a much more fundamental issue in this regard, which is the issue of experience. Because the arts are ultimately mainly interested in forms of experience, forms of phenomenological and sensory relations. But there's no way for us to know whether the category of the non-human is still thinkable through experience. And, you know, philosophically this makes a lot of sense to me, but, when you start to think about how to think about this in art-practices… Like, how do you start doing that?
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