STEPHEN CARPENTER: Welcome, everyone.
It's good to have you here.
I see some familiar faces and some less familiar faces.
So that's fantastic.
So what I wanted to do is prepare to talk.
And within the talk, I have some images,
a few videos to look at, and there's also
a audience participation component,
because that's just how I roll.
We have to practice what we're up to.
So this segment, this talk, is one that is looking at pedagogy
as not simply pedagogical strategies in general
but to look more at the ways that I translate
this idea of pedagogy through lenses or filters of disruption
or of criticality.
And so part of the work that I do professionally
is prepare teachers of art for K12.
But I also work with graduate students
as they conduct their research, I also
do my own research in scholarly kinds
of moves about the ways in which visual imagery, visual art,
visual cultural production, functions, as modes or spaces
for teaching and learning.
Jasper Johns, a pop artist, someone
who's been relegated into that space
by some critics and historians, this
is something-- this is a statement
he made about his art practice.
Like, how do you make your art?
What's your approach?
Take an objective, do something to it,
and I do something else to it.
Really?
Well, yeah, I mean, that seems really simplified.
But for me, that's a really interesting and quite powerful
methodology or method to use.
You take something, and then that thing is not just--
it's not finished.
It's not done being whatever it could be.
And then, do something to it.
OK, but then, keep it going.
Do something else do it.
So for me, the doing can happen in a number of ways.
You can alter it, you can modify it, you can throw it.
You can add something to it.
You can take something away.
But we can also, as viewers or people
who are engaging with that object, we might ask questions.
So the asking questions is a form of doing.
And so for me, Johns's quotation is nice, for me,
as a bridge from a more modernist mindset or approach
where it's about the object and it's
about the making, the process of making to--
some books might talk about the slide
into postmodernism or other post spaces,
where we move beyond objectness or materialness
to other realms that have more conceptual content
and interest.
That notion of asking questions or take an object,
doing something to it, doing something else to it,
you could engage learners like that.
That's one way to engage learners.
So if we think about learners, we
should also think about curriculum.
Now, this is an image--
this is not one that I drew, but it's
a cartoon, a single cartoon panel from Non Sequitur.
And I use this image when I teach curriculum classes.
So on the right, we have this larger fish
with kind of sharp teeth, and there's stuff falling down
from the fish's mouth, and then there are these three smaller
fish, and then there's another fish that's
kind of medium sized, and that one actually knows how to talk,
which I think is an interesting thing.
So we're able to know what fish say.
The medium-sized fish says, "No, we can't swim any faster.
The school curriculum is geared for the slower swimmers.
So the 10 of you have to wait for the others to catch up."
I don't know about you, I only see four other fish.
I only see four other fish.
I do see one fish.
It looks like little fish bits that are falling
from this larger fish's mouth.
So where is the curriculum?
Here, is the curriculum this larger fish
with the sharp teeth?
Is the curriculum the swimming?
Is the curriculum the water itself?
This cartoon allows us to have multiple entry points to ask
where the curriculum resides.
And if we think about that word "curriculum,"
it is derived from a Latin word, currere. and that's
the infinitive "to run" So "curriculum" is "to run."
It's the running of a course, rather than a noun.
We think about it in those terms, right?
Curriculum theorists did work in the '70s and '80s
to reconceptualize curriculum, but didn't
focus on this idea of curriculum as a verb "to run."
So the running or, in this case, the swimming of the course
is the curriculum-- so how they swim.
I'm assuming the medium-sized fish is the teacher
and could be, could also be the school principal
or whoever is in charge there.
But the middle three are probably--
or this is supposed to be maybe the students who
seem to know how to swim the course the way
that it was designed.
Well, this could be one of the learners,
too, swimming adequately.
But sometimes when I have used this image with my students
in curriculum courses, they talk about how this larger fish,
they often call it the barracuda--
see, that's the curriculum.
The curriculum eats up the swimmers
who don't swim in predetermined ways.
Oh, OK, so here, a curriculum is a noun
and an adversarial thing.
How depressing is that to be a teacher or a learner
to think the curriculum's after you; you better stay
in front of it?
But if we think of the curriculum
as a verb in the ways in which we swim,
maybe some swimmers swim higher in the water, some swim lower,
some swim sideways, some swim faster and slower.
How might the curriculum allow for multiple swimmers
rather than a predetermined and singular notion
of what a learner could be.
But that's if we privilege the idea of learning.
If we think about teaching, we can just deliver.
I mean, there are notions of teaching and curriculum
that, from the early 1900s and late 1800s that would proclaim
that learners are empty vessels, and the teacher
has all the knowledge.
We just fill you up with knowledge.
And that says, well, you're a learner.
You don't bring anything to the classroom.
But that's not the case.
You swim the way you swim.
Bring that to the classroom.
So this idea of shifting from teaching to learning privileges
or allows more attention to what learners bring to those spaces.
Well, another standardized approach
that was very popular 100 years ago and still
somehow is popular within some circles in art teaching
and education are the elements of art
and the principles of design.
Some people call them the elements and principles.
But it's the elements of art and principles of design.
And certainly, these are ways to say, look,
these are the things that are going on in visual imagery
or material culture.
But they weren't intended to be the limitations.
They were intended to be ways to gain access to what
we're seeing in front of us.
Misinterpretation of that, quite often,
studio teachers, art teachers, other folks
will think that these are the limits.
And if we only talk about line, shape, color, texture, pattern,
rhythm, then we've covered the curriculum.
We've taught what we need to teach.
Well, that's an interesting approach
if you want to avoid content, if you
want to avoid concepts, and ideas,
and social issues-- if you want to avoid
lived experiences in the lives of other people.
And certainly when you're looking at works of art that
are representative or reflections of lived
experiences to omit interest in what we're seeing and what is
being represented by simply limiting it to a formalist--
and this is formalized notions--
then, we're missing part of the conversation.
So a number of years ago, Olivia Gude,
who is a scholar at School of the Art Institute in Chicago.
She said, look, we're not in this modernist notion,
and there are different ways that we
can mobilize art practices.
And she constructed this set of postmodern principles
by looking at the work that her students were
making during weekend art classes in the Spiral Workshop.
And she said, you know, there's other principles,
the elements of art and principles of design,
those seven--
group of seven elements and group of seven principles
were guiding and have done some work in art curriculum.
But she said, as I look at the work my students are making
based on the assignments that we're
up to in the Spiral curriculum, that are focused on themes,
focused on social issues, focused on concepts,
focused on lived experiences, she said of all of these works,
these seven principles seem to emerge,
not that the elements of art and principles of design
aren't there.
Because I kind of dare you to point to something in the world
that you can't talk about in terms of line,
or shape, or texture, right?
So she's saying that from looking
at the students' work generated from a thematic approach
about concepts and lived experiences in the world--
text and image is a postmodern principle.
Hybridity, this idea of things kind of overlapping and merging
together, gazing, the way in which one looks,
and the perspective from which one looks,
and how one is looked at.
Representing-- not just to represent something
but how one's identity gets represented
or how one represents oneself.
Appropriation-- borrowing from one context or another;
juxtaposition, the critique of two objects
or two images in relationship to each other.
Recontextualization, similar to appropriation,
but taking something out of one context,
putting it in a new context, now it
speaks differently about this other context.
And layering, this idea of how narratives or layers can
be read through each other for multiple meanings.
And I love what she says, which is also
the pull-out quotation from this article,
"An infinite amount of time is wasted in misdirected effort
because tradition has a strong hold."
I mean, there are other things that we can be doing,
but, because we're regimented in tradition,
we just can't get there.
All right, so let's engage some learners like this.
How about being some learners?
Good?
All right, I have--
we have large paper.
These are essentially jumbo-sized Post-it notes.
And we have markers.
We have markers of different colors.
Most of them are also gigantic sizes.
It's like this larger cartoon version of Post-it notes
and little markers.
And what I would like you to do is,
we're going to use this approach where we're going to do--
it's derived from think, pair, share--
this approach of learning, where I
want you to think on your own, and then you're
going to find someone else to pair with, and connect with,
and then you're going to share your ideas with each other,
then we'll share with the group.
So what I'd like you to do right now
is, if you have something to write with, that's great--
I don't think we brought any normal-sized paper,
but I'll give you two minutes to do this first part
to think on your own.
What I would like you to do is choose one--
I'm not going to decide for you, but I'd
like you to choose on your own, one of these tasks,
one of these statements, and I want
you to come up with a list.
So if you choose the first one, you're
going to come up with a list of 10 important women
in the history of the world.
Don't show anybody.
Keep it to yourself for now.
Or you could choose the second one.
You can make a list of 10 important events
in the history of the world.
Or you can make a list of 10 important human creations
in the history of the world.
Does that make sense?
Two minutes, go for it, and then we'll come back together.
The activity that we are doing is one
that I use in a curriculum development class and also
curriculum theory class, usually near the beginning
of the semester to underscore this idea that curriculum
development, curriculum design, curriculum,
as a general practice, is a political act,
and it's based in values.
It's based in experiences.
Imagine a textbook company approached you and says,
oh, you could get this contract for a textbook, a history book.
We only have enough money for 10 chapters.
So if you had 10 weeks to teach a course, what 10 topics
would you teach?
You've got to decide what doesn't get taught.
Deciding what is not in the curriculum
is part of the political act.
It's part of the decision-making.
So these three prompts are ones that I've
used for years, and years, and years
to do exactly what we did.
You did it in like 15 minutes.
I typically spend 15 minutes having the students generate
the ideas, then we spend 45 minutes
critiquing and interpreting.
We're not going to spend 45 minutes critiquing
and interpreting, but I'll lead you through some of the things
that I like to do.
Which prompt was this one?
AUDIENCE: It's events?
STEPHEN CARPENTER: This is events?
This one?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Creations.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: Creations?
What was this one?
AUDIENCE: Creations.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: Creations.
AUDIENCE: Women.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: Women.
AUDIENCE: Creations.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: Creations.
Now, notice the prompts are-- we'll
talk about how I worded the prompts in a little bit.
I find it interesting-- this is just the way I'm reading
your lists--
one, two, three, four of the five lists use numbers.
My assumption is that the one entry next to the number one
is the most important, only because it's listed--
I'm just kind of culturally--
you know in that habit.
When I see a one, I think of that being first.
Usually, first is most important unless you're David Letterman;
you're reading your top-10 lists backwards.
If you had a last-minute email from the publisher, [GASP]
we just got some more money.
We could add another chapter to your textbook.
But you've got to tell us by the end of the business day today.
Could you come up with your number 11?
Right?
Or, oh, I'm sorry.
Our budget has been slashed.
We have to cut two chapters.
Which two are the least important.
These are questions that curriculum designers,
curriculum developers make all the time.
Teachers, how much time do we have
in the semester or the school year to teach?
Oh, we only got so far.
We've got to hurry up and rush because this is more important.
And somebody else told us this was important,
so we've got to teach--
well, I'm not teaching that.
That seems less important.
These are political decisions.
But what is in is only there because it wasn't left out.
A critical pedagogy or pedagogy that I
like to enact and encourage my students to use
is one that asks these kinds of questions.
It's constantly in this frame of asking.
Even when we have our list, even when we have our decision of,
what seems to be important--
well, why is this on the list?
And where else does this allow us to go?
If we take Toni Morrison, what can we do with her work?
Where does her work allow us to go, following Jasper Johns?
And then, where does that allow us to go?
Take Toni Morrison, not an object--
but we can think it in those ways--
take this entry, do something to it, do something else to it.
The word "most" doesn't appear in any of those prompts.
Did you pick up on that?
Why do you think I didn't put the word "most" in there?
AUDIENCE: Too much pressure.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: Too much pressure?
On me?
I could've easily written--
I'm fine with four-letter words.
I can just-- so, too much pressure for whom?
AUDIENCE: For us, for [INAUDIBLE]
STEPHEN CARPENTER: Oh.
AUDIENCE: Even though I think we still tried to do that,
it didn't feel--
it felt, like, OK, what are 10 important events you
can come up with.
AUDIENCE: And it's subjective.
What's most important to me is probably not
what's most important to you, or her, or whoever's sitting here.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: OK.
AUDIENCE: "Most" might have got in the way of the word
"important."
Because if you don't have the "most" there, you think,
what is important, and [INAUDIBLE]
STEPHEN CARPENTER: So it's kind of a pedagogical strategy
to take some stress away, to allow entry,
to remove some of the complications embedded
in just working out the different values ahead of time
anyway.
I mean, certainly, those are important conversations.
Not the stress.
I don't like to induce stress in students.
But to make an activity or allow an activity
to have points of entry for people
where they feel like they can be part of that work is crucial.
AUDIENCE: I also think that now, that all the lists are
done, that because the word "most" is not there,
it's not a final list.
So I can look at somebody else's list
and say, OK, that is also important, as
opposed to a final list of the most important.
So it allows for changing after it's done up there.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: Absolutely.
So it's not fixed.
Absolutely.
But that notion of curriculum, for a lot of people--
it's fixed.
It's done.
It's a noun.
It's not a running.
It's not a continuation.
It's not a springboard and a prompt.
You're exactly right.
It's a point of continuous learning.
Yeah, good stuff.
All right, so let's slide back up here.
Wow, this is about 20 years ago.
And I was working with hypertext software, story space.
So you kind of see that map in the upper left.
And my idea was, I go to the barber shop,
and I get my haircut.
But I learn a lot of stuff in that barber shop.
I think this barber shop might be a curriculum.
It might be an educational space.
No, it's a hypertext.
There's a bunch of moving parts and different relation-- maybe
it's all of those things.
So I started to overlap those different thoughts into a piece
called "Pat's Barbershop."
One day I asked the gathering of barbers and clients,
what can someone learn in here?
Meaning, what can someone learn in this barber shop?
And this barber shop is in Norfolk, Virginia,
predominately African-American segment of Norfolk.
This was when I was on faculty at Old Dominion University.
So I asked Pat, the owner and lead barber,
what can somebody learn in here?
And according to Pat, people learn
a lot about life, education, business,
the street, the whole nine.
Someone else noted with a smirk, they learn what a gram is.
He was talking about illicit substances.
How much you can get for a stolen TV--
"and they can learn that crack is good.
We love crackheads."
What he meant was--
the first part he was actually being sarcastic.
But the second part, he was being more supportive.
In a matter-of-fact tone, one of the barbers
commented, If you could put a camera in here for a week,
you could make a movie.
At one point, Pat himself responded to my question
in a melodic chant, "OJ did it!
OJ did it!--" a reference to a scene in the movie Barbershop
and the famous court trial.
Later, in a more serious tone, Pat proudly
stated, "Younger teenagers, learn from me.
Don't sell drugs, be successful, keep a straight head."
Pat admitted that, in his place, you learn about everyday life.
And this project went on for years.
And they'd call me "Professor"--
"Hey, Professor, guess what?"
And they would start to tell me what they learned recently
until I'd get new lessons.
And so this article is filled with different ways
to think about that barbershop as a hypertext.
Looking at other subsequent work, not only
am I artist in residence here at MIT this year,
but I'm also an artist in residence
at a local elementary school back where I live.
I've been working with first graders and third graders.
So you know what I did a few weeks ago?
I talked to third graders about epidemiology,
which is what you do, right?
I showed them this map.
My intention wasn't to talk specifically
about epidemiology.
My intention was to talk about how
the visual representation of ideas
or how the visual representation of data
and the visual representation of information
might allow us access to ways of knowing and understanding
that we wouldn't have without those visual representations.
So here, we have a segment of London.
And you see a bunch of dots there.
And those dots, essentially, are the places
where John Snow, in the late 1800s,
identified people who had died from cholera.
And his theory, which was different than local theory
and the common theory at that point--
his theory was, people were getting cholera from water.
Everybody else, said, no!
It's in the air.
Or, it's divine intervention.
Or, something else is going on.
John, you don't know what you're talking about.
So I told the kids this.
I didn't tell them this yet.
I said, here's a map.
What do you see?
Oh, it's a map.
OK.
And what else do you see?
Well, I see a bunch of dots.
What do you think those dots are?
Those are the people.
That's where they live.
Or, maybe that's where something happened.
Why are there more dots here and not over there?
I don't know.
And they said, oh, wait, there's some X's.
What do you think those X's are?
And they had all these ideas.
Well, you don't see the X's?
Here are the X's.
The X's are here.
Oh, OK, that's helpful.
Thanks.
So what's going on?
Tell me about the relationship between the X's and the dots.
Oh, well, most of the dots are in the middle, and most of them
are on that green dot in the center.
I said, oh, you know what?
That's what John Snow thought, too.
Guess what he figured out?
That's where the people were getting sick.
That's where the people were dying, because they
were drinking the water.
And it was because he was able to visually represent the data,
he could get to this observation.
They thought that was pretty cool.
Then, I told them, so now, here's
a new word-- epidemiology.
A bunch of eight and nine-year-olds
saying, "epidemiology."
It was great.
But they start to understand how visual representation
of information allows access to ideas in different ways.
And I said, if you like this map, what about this one?
Other people thought that that map was interesting, too.
How many different ways could you
represent data visually using a map?
Other people thought John Snow's idea was really cool.
Oh, and then as soon as I showed this, oh!
That's Google Maps!
Eight and nine-year-olds know about Google Maps?
Yeah.
Hmm.
So now, how does Google Maps play
into how we might teach in elementary school
about space, about visual representation?
Just taking an object, and doing something to it,
and doing something else to it?
I do something similar with my preservice teachers.
As they're preparing to become teachers
and preparing to go out into classrooms to do their student
teaching, when they're just trying
to figure out how learning and teaching
happens in educational spaces, one
of the tasks I give them is, all right,
go ahead and do your next observation.
What I want you to do is, when you sit down,
I want you to draw a map of the classroom on a piece of paper
and take with you a marker that you
know will bleed if you leave it too long on the piece of paper.
And what I want you to do is I want
you to make a note of where all of the furniture
is in the room--
entry points, exit points--
I want you to indicate where the students are when you enter
the room and indicate where the teacher is
by putting your marker down.
And the entire time that you're there,
you move your marker wherever the teacher moves.
And when the teacher stops, you stop your marker.
When the teacher starts moving, you move the marker.
So if the teacher stops, the marker stops.
If the marker stops, the marker starts to bleed.
It starts to, over time, take up more and more space.
And then, I collect these maps, and we look at them.
We start talking about the relationship between where
the teacher is in the room, where
the learners are in the room, how the content is conveyed.
We talk about, what were the kids doing over here?
If they're sitting over here, what were the kids doing?
Because it looks like the teacher
was over here most of the time.
Were they talking?
Were they engaged?
Were they moving around the room?
I'll show you some other maps.
This person didn't use a marker, so they just kind of kept
scribbling and overlapping.
This is curious, isn't it?
This teacher is either exhausted, or on Rollerblades,
or something.
The teacher's all over the place, maybe not in a bad way.
Certainly, not giving a lecture like I'm doing right now.
How do you know?
Well, look at the map!
Well, where was the teacher?
The teacher was, essentially, everywhere,
interacting with different students,
moving to one station, moving to another station.
The teacher filled that space physically.
So in the conversations that would
have to be generated later would be,
so then, what was happening among the learners, too?
What relationship does this teacher movement
have to do with the ways in which students are learning?
Whoa, look at that teacher!
What might we learn about the practice of teaching
and the practice of learning by visualizing movement?
You could try to do it with all the students,
but I don't know if you have enough fingers
to move all the kids around, right?
Interpretation-- the construction
of meaning or the attending to the construction of meanings
by talking about and making sense of works of art.
Ooh, do you know about America Rock and Schoolhouse Rock?
When I was a kid, these shows would come on Saturday morning
cartoons between the cartoon--
two or three-minute videos, Schoolhouse Rock
and America Rock.
America Rock was a way for us to learn
about the history of the United States--
or "a" history of the United States.
So here, you see some of the episodes--
"No More Kings," "The Founding of America,"
"Fireworks," "The Declaration of Independence,"
"The Preamble of the Constitution."
I know the entire preamble because I
watched Schoolhouse Rock--
"We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union--"
The one at the top is from "No More Kings."
There's King George in the middle.
[GIGGLE]
Ooh, Boston Tea Party.
Is that big cup still here in the water?
No?
The one on the bottom--
this is called "Elbow Room"--
elbow room, elbow room, got to got to get me some elbow room.
That's where I learned the word "manifest destiny"--
or the term "manifest destiny."
Schoolhouse Rock.
This is the melting pot, shaped in the form of the Continental
United States--
little guy just jumps right in.
"It doesn't matter what your skin.
Those are the lyrics."
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC - SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK, "NO MORE KINGS"]
(SINGING) Rockin' and a-rollin, splishin' and a-splashin,
over the horizon, what can it be?
The pilgrins sailed the sea to find a place
to call their own in their ship Mayflower.
They hoped to find a better home.
They finally knocked on Plymouth Rock
and someone said, "We're there."
It may not look like home, but at this point, I don't care.
Oh, they were missing Mother England.
They swore their loyalty until the very end.
Anything you say, King.
It's OK, King.
You know, it's kind of scary on your own.
build a new land the way we planned.
Could you help us run it until it's grown?
They planted corn, you know.
They built their houses one by one.
And bit by bit, they worked until the colonies were done.
They looked around, yeah, up and down, and someone said, Hurray!
If the king could only see us now, he would be proud of us
today!
They knew that now they'd run their own land.
But George III still vowed he'd rule until the end.
Anything I say, do it my way now.
Anything I say, do it my way.
Don't you get to feeling independent because I'm
going to force you to obey!
He taxed their property.
He didn't give them any choice.
And back in England, he didn't give them any voice.
That's called taxation without representation,
and it's not fair.
But when the colonies complained, the king said,
I don't care.
He even has the nerve to tax our cup of tea.
To put it kindly, King, we really don't agree.
Going to show you how we feel.
We're going to this tea and turn this harbor
into the biggest cup of tea in history!
They wanted no more Mother England.
They knew the time had come for them to take command.
It's very clear you're being unfair,
King, no matter what you say, we won't obey.
Going to hold a revolution now, King,
and we're gonna run it all our way.
With no more kings--
We're going to elect a president.
No more kings.
He's going to do what the people want.
No more kings.
We're going to run things our way!
No more kings!
Nobody's going to tell us what to do!
Rockin' and a-rollin', splishin' and a-splashin'.
Over the horizon, what can it be?
Looks like it's going to be a free country.
[CHEERS]
[END OF VIDEO PLAYBACK]
STEPHEN CARPENTER: What a great place to live.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, the president does what the people want.
Like, what else did you learn from that?
I just learned that the president
does what the people want.
What else did you learn about this country
based from this Schoolhouse Rock video?
AUDIENCE: That we stand up for what we want?
OK.
Fight for what we want.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: OK, fight for what we want,
stand up for what we want.
What else did you learn?
Pilgrims and the colonists didn't pay any attention
to people living there.
Were there people living here in this video?
AUDIENCE: There were these--
STEPHEN CARPENTER: There were three.
AUDIENCE: We learned about what we didn't learn.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: Oh, what we didn't-- tell me something.
AUDIENCE: All the things that we didn't
learn that this video wildly misrepresented and erased
a crucial part of history before and after.
And even in the implications of "freedom,"
it was freedom for white males.
But it paints a very nice, easy picture
of what history was that is not true,
and it has repercussions now because of a false history.
STEPHEN CARPENTER : Well, I mean,
they only had three minutes.
I mean, you only had 10 slots.
If you had 11 slots, that--
they only had three minutes.
How can they put all that stuff in--
I'm being, you know.
So if you're an art teacher, let's say you're assigned to
or you're teaching interdisciplinary unit,
working with the history teacher,
you could justify showing this video--
I mean, illustration, video production
can be taught through the art classroom.
The history teacher can pull the--
there's history being taught.
I could justify following a prescribed curriculum that
says, history teacher and art teacher
will work collaboratively to teach together.
Yeah, OK, we're watching some Schoolhouse Rock,
and we're going to interpret through--
remember those pedagogical lenses that--
well, you were applying many of them in your reading.
And we were applying many of them
in our reading of that list.
So as an art teacher or just a teacher who
likes to cause trouble, or ask questions, or promote
critical thinking, we could show these videos like this,
or you could show any visual culture example
in interpreting critique through those different lenses.
So I want to show you a couple of assignments.
This assignment is by another colleague, Andres Hernandez,
who teaches at School of the Art Institute in Chicago.
And so this is a project that he asked the students
to do where he uses this quotation to talk about this
and to question this term, "informal settlements."
Now, you think about refugees.
You think about people who have been displaced.
And to think about the housing that they
have constructed for themselves is informal-- really?
It's as formal as it's going to get
for those folks in that moment.
I mean, the terminology itself is problematic.
And so he's thinking about these--
if you think about these kinds of places,
it says, in fewer words, the city produced by the people.
So inspired by the notion of, a city produced by people,
he tells the students who are learning to be art teachers--
and we have these open spaces at Vermont College of Fine Arts--
you're going to take on this space,
and you're going to build a shelter out of cardboard,
and it has to have-- and there are certain criteria.
You have to have a certain number of people in it.
And by doing that, at the bottom,
you see the purpose of this assignment
is that it's this intuitive building using
limited materials and is focused on a 1 to 1
scale or the scale of real life.
So right there, because it's not a model,
because it's scaled at real life,
there's a way that our bodies enter
into the reality and maybe into the reality of other people.
It says, "Further purposes of this design brief
is a basic introduction of site specificity
as well as full-scale prototyping and sketch
modeling."
And then, at the end, these models
can be used to design to talk about principles
of structure, enclosure, construction techniques.
So these are elements I would assume
that are part of many other disciplines,
architecture, urban planning, and so forth.
But the idea is that he's drawing
from a quotation from a theoretical argument
focusing on a term and saying, this term is problematic.
Let's see what we might learn and how
we might trouble this term through the act of making
works of art.
And then, those works of art allow
us to gain literally entry points into them,
but also entry into the complications of what
those terms mean.
Here's another assignment Andres provides the students.
Find a building and engage with the spaces.
And then, document it through photography.
So what do you learn about the physicality of a building
by becoming part of that building,
by becoming part of the negative spaces?
You could write about it.
You could measure it--
tape measures.
Or, your body could try to fit in there
and try to understand what that space is about.
I know from teaching drawing, one technique we can do,
if we put a chair, or a series of chairs,
or still life in the middle of the room,
we all had our drawing paper.
We could start drawing what we see.
And that would get us so far.
But one strategy an art teacher will always do or often do
is say, I want you to draw what's not there.
I want you to draw the negative space.
And when you draw the negative spaces between the chair,
the spaces between the bars, and the spaces between the handles
and the rungs--
by drawing and rendering those negative spaces
as accurately as possible, you render the positive spaces.
So what do we learn by studying what is not
there or the neglected spaces?
We learn more about the presence of the dominant structure.
So there are a number of books about pedagogy
and about translating art practice and pedagogical
engagements in public spaces, right?
So I'll just conclude here for some questions.
You know, you can engage learners like this--
or you could do boring stuff.
[LAUGHTER]
It's up to you.
All right, thanks.
[APPLAUSE]