Sister Corita Kent

A catholic convent might not be the first place to consider when searching for a radical art education in the late 20th century - that is, unless you had Sister Corita Kent as an instructor. Aside from creating over 400 brilliantly colored serigraphs radical in their manipulation of text, graphic design elements, and activism, Corita Kent was an inspiring and influential educator to both teachers and students alike. In this beautiful documentary created by Araron Rose, we are given a glimpse into Kent’s unconventional instruction through first hand accounts made by her students and peers. Here we see how her radical teaching methods stimulate her students' creativity beyond the classroom by teaching them first and foremost “how to see, to really see,...to look, to look again - anew.” 

 
http://www.nowness.com/day/2010/6/5/685/breaking-a-habit-sister-corita

A clip from the documentary, Become a Microscope by Aaron Rose

As part of a project in 1967-1968, Kent authored “Ten Rules,” a list of “commandments” for both the student and teacher participating in a creative practice. These rules were later appropriated permanently by the Immaculate Heart Convent art department - at which she had been both an alumni and a sister - and have been adopted and popularized by artist and educator John Cage, who is directly quoted as the tenth rule. The rules are as follows:

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.

RULE TWO: General duties of a student — pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.

RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher — pull everything out of your students.

RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.

RULE FIVE: Be self-disciplined — this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.

RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

RULE EIGHT: Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.

RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.

RULE TEN: “We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” (John Cage)

HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything — it might come in handy later.

Corita Kent was both an alumni and sister of LA’s Immaculate Heart Convent. She ran the art department from 1951 until 1968 when she moved to Boston. Corita Kent died of cancer Sept. 18, 1986. Find more information about Sister Corita Kent and her extraordinary life at https://www.corita.org/.

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"Breaking A Habit: Sister Corita." NOWNESS. N.p., 5 June 2010. Web. 03 Dec. 2012. <http://www.nowness.com/day/2010/6/5/685/breaking-a-habit-sister-corita>.

Papova, Mario. "Brain Pickings." Brain Pickings RSS. N.p., 10 Aug. 12. Web. 03 Dec. 2012. <http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/08/10/10-rules-for-students-and-teachers-john-cage-corita-kent/>.

"Corita Kent." Corita Art Center--Art and Activism of Sister Mary Corita. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2012. <https://www.corita.org/>.

Artist Placement Group - (APG)

What a brilliant idea!

This is all preliminary research pertaining to the Artist Placement Group.

                                                                                                                                                      

E-Flux

"Artist Placement Group, APG." E-flux. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. <http://e-flux.com/timebank/event/artist-placement-group-apg>.

Note: This appears to be a press release for an exhibition, The Social Contract, 14 Feb - 23 Feb 2012

http://e-flux.com/timebank/event/artist-placement-group-apg

"Artist Placement Group (APG) was conceived by Barbara Steveni in London in 1965, and established a year later by Steveni and founding artists Barry Flanagan, David Hall, John Latham, Anna Ridley, and Jeffrey Shaw, among others. Between 1966 and the mid-1980s, APG negotiated approximately twenty placements on behalf of artists in industry and government. Unlike most residency schemes that have emerged in its wake, APG artists were not required to produce any determinable object as a result of her or his placement."

The goals of the APG were to:

-place an artist in an industry or government non-art related
-not to have the artist "work for" the industry, but it was more of an experiment to see what might be the benefit/outcome of a creative individual in an typically "non-art" situation

It was very difficult to evaluate the influence on either the artist or industry this program had.  

Artist Placement Group, Between 6, Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1971. Courtesy Barbara Stevini

                                                                                                                                                       

Frieze Magazine

Context is Half the Work

Peter Eleey 
 

Eleey, Peter. "Frieze Magazine | Archive | Context Is Half the Work." Frieze Magazine RSS. N.p., Nov. 2011. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. <http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/context_is_half_the_work/>. 

"In 1966, the Artist Placement Group was founded to integrate artists into businesses and corporations around Britain. Did the strategy bear fruit?"

In the same decade two similar groups developed:

• Los Angeles County Museum of Art, "Art and Technology Program" under the direction of curator Maurice Tuchman
• A collaboration between Bell Labs and Robert Rauschenberg, Experiments in Art and Technology (EATS)

"APG favoured the notion that artists could have a positive effect on industry through both their inherent creativity and their relative ignorance of its conventions." 

1968 - Industrial Negative Symposium, London

Artist Placements:

Garth Evans - British Steel Corporation
David Hall - British European Airways + Scottish Television
Stuart Brisley - Hillie Co. Ltd
Leonard Hessing - ICI Fibres
Lois Price - Milton Keynes Development Corporation
Ian MacDonald-Munro + Marie Yates - Centre for the Study of Human Learning at Brunel University
John Latham - National Coal Board + Proteus Bygging
Ian Breakwell + David Parsons - British Rail
Andrew Dipper - Esso Petroleum

APG recieved much criticism as an art practice. 

"Lathom's...'least-event,' an idea borrowed from scientist friends, which he saw as a kind of zero moment from which things flowed forward into the present and beyond."

"Instead of pulling the audience and environment into the art work, APG located the work out in the world, a tabula rasa on which society’s approval of artists (or lack thereof) would register."

In 1989, APG refocused its efforts in advocacy and policy than actual placement and renamed "Organization and Imagination" (O+I).

"Nevertheless, the Utopian vision of what she called ‘repositioning art in the decision-making processes of society’ remained and continues in force."

"The approach of APG makes evident artists’ obsession during the 1960s and ’70s to engage with the new ‘systems’ of social science, culture and industry, but it was among the first to model in its practice the shift towards a service-based economy that was occurring in society at large, as well as the rise of intellectual property as a product."

Other service-based practices referenced in this article:

"When artists work in open-endedly collaborative relationships – projects such as Marjetica Potrc’s infrastructure improvements in impoverished communities, Superflex’s guarana co-operative and soft drink company in Brazil, Thomas Hirschhorn’s Bataille Monument (2002) or France Morin’s The Quiet in the Land residencies"

                                                                                                                                                        

Raven Row (Contemporary Art Space, London) 

The Individual and the Organisation: Artist Placement Group 1966-79

Curated by Antony Hudek and Alex Sainsbury, consultation by Barbara Steveni

"The Individual and the Organisation: Artist Placement Group 1966-79." Raven Row. Ed. Antony Hudek and Alex Sainsbury. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. <http://www.ravenrow.org/current/>.

"APG arranged that artists would work to an 'open brief', whereby their placements were not required to produce tangible results, but that the engagement itself could potentially benefit both host organisations as well as the artists in the long-term."

"Instead of commissioning art works, the host organizations were asked to pay the artist wages and in exchange, they would benefit from the artist's reports, ideas and insights."

Statement

Statement

 

My creative practice is disguised as pedagogical programming that aims to initiate proactive and innovative responses to everyday challenges. By collaborating with communities to develop a network of resources that are accessible and relevant, I explore how creative experiences have sustainable effects. 

Third-person Statement

Gabriela Santiago's creative practice is disguised as pedagogical programming that aims to initiate proactive and innovative responses to everyday challenges. By collaborating with communities to develop a network of resources that are accessible and relevant, Gabriela explores how creative experiences have sustainable effects.

Turning

Curating the Educational Turn
Turning

Irit Rogoff

Rogoff, Irit. "Turning." Curating and the Educational Turn. Ed. Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson. London: Open Editions, 2010. 23-31. Print.
   
Found online here: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/turning/

Date: 11/11/2012

Primary claims made in this reading:

This is a powerful article about education. I wish I could add the entire text as a giant quote. Basically, Rogoff is evaluating effective education on two primary principles: potentiality (the possibility to act) and actualisation (understanding that the possibility to act and organise exists everywhere). 

Key Figures: 

A.C.A.D.E.M.Y project (2006) - "a series of exhibitions that took place at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindohoven as a collaboration between 22 participants and museum staff. The project as a whole posed the question: 'What can we learn from the museum?' and referred to learning that operated beyond what the museums sets our to show or teach us." (Pg. 35)

Th Bologna Declaration - the reform of European education that focuses on standardizing education by standardizing evaluation and outcomes.

Key Quotes: 

"By potentiality, we meant the possibility to act which is not limited to the ability to act. Acting, therefore, can never be understood as something simply enabled by a set of skills or opportunities; it is also dependent on a will and a drive. Even more importantly, it must also include within it an element of fallibility - the possibility that acting will entail failure." (Pg. 36)

"...actualisation, by which we mean understanding that there are meanings and possibilities embedded within objects, situations, actors, and spaces and that it is our task to liberate them, as it were." (Pg. 36)

"These other approaches place education as forever reactively addressing the woes of the world while we hoped to posit education 'in' and 'of' the world, not a s a response to crisis but part of its ongoing complexities, producing realities, not reacting to them, and many of these are low key and un-categorisable and non heroic and certainly not uplifting but nevertheless immensely creative." (Pg. 39) 

"Propelled from within, rather than boxed in from the outside, education becomes the site of odd and unexpected coming together - shared curiosities, shared subjectivities, shared sufferings, shared passions congregate around the promise of a subject, of an insight, of a creative possibility." (Pg. 39)

"At its best, education forms collectivities, many fleeting collectivities which ebb and flow, converge and fall apart. Small ontological communities are propelled by desire and curiosity, cemented together by the kind of empowerment that comes from intellectual challenge." (Pg. 39)

"The point about coming together in curiosity is that we don't then have to come together in identity..."(Pg. 40)

"So, at this moment in which we are so preoccupied with how to participate, how to take part in the limited ground that remains open, education signals rich possibilities of coming together and participating in an arena that is not yet signaled." (Pg. 40)

"Perhaps there is a n excitement in shifting out perception of a training ground to one which is not pure preparation, pure resolution.  Instead, it might encompass fallibility, understand it as a from of knowledge production rather than of disappointment." (Pg. 40) 

"...I want to think of education as all of the places to which we have access. And access, as I understand it, is the ability to formulate one's own questions, as opposed to those that are posed to you in the name of an open and participatory democratic process, for it is clear that those who formulate the questions produce the playing field." (Pg. 41)

"...in education, when we challenge, we are saying there is room for imagining another way of thinking..." (Pg. 41)

concatenate

adjective

linking together.

verb (concatenated, concatenation, concatenating)

to link together in a series or chain 


"Concatenate." About Our Definitions: All Forms of a Word (noun, Verb, Etc.) Are Now Displayed on One Page. Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2012. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imbrication>. 

5by20: Coca-Cola Broadens Horizons for Women

5by20: Coca-Cola Broadens Horizons for Women
http://www.coca-colacompany.com/ 

James O'brien 

O'brien, James. "5by20: Coca-Cola Broadens Horizons for Women." The Coca-Cola Company. N.p., 9 Nov. 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. <http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/5by20-coca-cola-broadens-horizons-for-women>.

Key Quotes:

“We need to increase awareness that better societies can be created as a result of empowering women." (Muhtar Kent,
Coca-Cola’s chairman and CEO)

                                                                                                                                                     

The Coca-Cola 5by20
http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/5by20

Journal Staff

Journal Staff. "5by20." The Coca-Cola Company. N.p., 1 Jan. 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. <http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/5by20>. 

Key Quotes:

"Our Goal: To enable the economic empowerment of 5 million women entrepreneurs across our global value chain by 2020."

"Through 5by20, we address the most common barriers women face when trying to succeed in the marketplace. This initiative offers women access to business skills training courses, financial services and connections with peers or mentors -- along with the confidence that comes with building a successful business."

Click here for video about he 5by20 initiative and one of their partners "Half the Sky.

                                                                                                                                                         

5 BY 20 program announced at TED Women

Sean Wood

Wood, Sean. "5 BY 20 Program Announced at TED Women." Freeworld Media RSS. N.p., 11 Dec. 2010. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. <http://freeworldmedia.com/blog/5by20-program-announced-at-ted-women/>. 

Press Release: 5by20 program unveilded at TED Women.  

Key Quotes:

 

“Anytime you have something like 5 BY 20, you always want to make sure an initiative is germane and organic to you already. And this initiative is something that is very organic to our system.” - Wendy Clark

                                                                                                                                                       

   
The Coca Cola Company and 5 BY 20… You Go Girls!

"The Coca Cola Company and 5 BY 20… You Go Girls!" Seven Bar Foundation. Seven Bar Foundation, 7 Apr. 2011. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. <http://www.sevenbarfoundation.org/blog/the-coca-cola-company-and-5-by-20-you-go-girls/>.

Key Quotes:

"Doing good is doing well! We support Coca Cola in their global commitment to women’s empowerment and look forward to their success as this initiative continues to unfold"

Pioneers of Documentary Photography Featured in New Exhibit on "Scientific Charity"

Pioneers of Documentary Photography Featured in New Exhibit on "Scientific Charity"

 
Nick Obourn  

Obourn, Nick. "Pioneers of Documentary Photography Featured in New Exhibit on 'Scientific Charity'"On Campus | Columbia News. N.p., 14 Nov. 2011. Web. 13 Nov. 2012. <http://news.columbia.edu/socialforces>.

Date: 11/13/2012

For a quick link to the video, click here.

This is a review of an exhibition of photographs used in the early 20th century for scientific manuals regarding social work practice in New York City. Highlighted in this exhibition are clotheslines of those in poverty stretched across ally ways in tennnant housing districts.

Key Quotes:

Introduction to photography exhibition:

"A boy with leg braces and crutches rests against a fire alarm. A woman hangs laundry from a clothesline strung across an airshaft behind a row of tenement buildings. Pushcarts line a crowded street in lower Manhattan. "

"These haunting black-and-white photographs are featured in a new exhibition at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery that explores the role that social welfare organizations founded in the 19th and early 20th century played in documenting and alleviating the plight of the urban poor."

Key Figures:

Community Service Society (CSS)

Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine and Jessie Tarbox Beals - American Photographers.

Control I'm Here: A Call for the Free Use of the Means of Producing Communication, in Curating and in General

Curating and the Educational Turn
Control I'm Here: A Call for the Free Use of the Means of Producing Communication, in Curating and in General

Jan Verwoet

Verwoet, Jan. "Control I'm Here: A Call For the Free Use of the Means of Producing Communication, in Curating and in General." Curating and the Educational Turn. Ed. Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson. London: Open Editions, 2010. 23-31. Print.

Date: 11/11/2012

Verwoet is suggesting that the demands of institutions are unreasonable, specifically the demands and perimeters it puts on the roles of those working within/with institutions (artists, curator, commissioner). This is a call to action. Individuals working in this situation are the only ones who can redefine the institution and begin handling it in a different way, "with some soul." 

Key Quotes:

"Collective improvisation is exemplary in that it is the closest we may get to an experience of autonomy. This is to experience that the relation between what is possible and impossible in a given situation, among particular people, in not exhaustively governed by external standards (of Control), but also shaped by the immanent dynamics of that situation. The blind urge to satisfy external standards typically stifles those dynamics. The capacity to grasp and gradually shift the terms of possibility/impossibility from within the situation, on the other hand, constitutes the intelligence of an creative process attuned to the immanent logic of its own unfolding." (Pg. 30)

imbrication

noun 

1 an overlapping of edges (as of tiles or scales) 

2 a decoration or pattern showing imbrication 

"Imbrication." About Our Definitions: All Forms of a Word (noun, Verb, Etc.) Are Now Displayed on One Page. Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imbrication>.

opine

verb (opines, opining, opined)
saying something as your opinion.

Stevenson, Angus, Julia Elliott, and Richard Jones. "Opine." The Little Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.

bivouac

noun
a makeshift open-air camp without tents. 

verb (bivouacs, bivouacking, bivouacked)
stay overnight in such a camp.

Stevenson, Angus, Julia Elliott, and Richard Jones. "Bivouac." The Little Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.  

inimical

adjective
tending to obstruct or harm; hostile. 

Stevenson, Angus, Julia Elliott, and Richard Jones. "Inimical." The Little Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.

Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning

Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning

Alix Spiegel

Spiegel, Alix. "Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning." NPR. NPR, 12 Nov. 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/12/164793058/struggle-for-smarts-how-eastern-and-western-cultures-tackle-learning>.

Date: 11/12/2012

Primary claims made in this reading:

Eastern cultures recognize struggle as a component of learning and attribute intelligence to a students' capacity to overcome obstacles in learning. Western cultures, in contrast, tend to attribute struggles in learning to a lack of intelligence, or ability to learn - as if learning should come naturally. This difference reflects Eastern and Westerns views of struggle and how it effects an individuals self-image. 

Key Quotes:

"I think that from very early ages we [in America] see struggle as an indicator that you're just not very smart," Stigler says. "It's a sign of low ability — people who are smart don't struggle, they just naturally get it, that's our folk theory. Whereas in Asian cultures they tend to see struggle more as an opportunity."

"In Eastern cultures, Stigler says, it's just assumed that struggle is a predictable part of the learning process. Everyone is expected to struggle in the process of learning, and so struggling becomes a chance to show that you, the student, have what it takes emotionally to resolve the problem by persisting through that struggle."

"Obviously if struggle indicates weakness — a lack of intelligence — it makes you feel bad, and so you're less likely to put up with it. But if struggle indicates strength — an ability to face down the challenges that inevitably occur when you are trying to learn something — you're more willing to accept it."

Dance in My Experience (Diary Entries)//1965-66

Dance in My Experience (Diary Entries)//1965-66

Helio Oiticica

Oiticica, Helio. Dance in My Experience (Diary Entries)//1965-66. >>>(Need More information to complete citation).

Date: 9/22/2012

Primary claims made in this reading:

Oiticica claims to dissolve marginalization through the act of dance and performance.    

Key Quotes:

"It is as if an immersion into rhythm takes place, a flux where the intellect remains obscured by an internal mythical force that operates at an individual and collective level (in fact, in this instance one cannot establish a distinction between the collective and the individual). (Pg. 105)

Oiticica makes a claim here that makes me uncomfortable,

"I believe that the dynamics of the social structures were at this moment revealed to me in all their crudity, in their most immediate expression, precisely due to my process of discrediting the so-called social layers: Not that I consider their existence but that, for me, they have become schematic, artificial, as if all of a sudden I gazed from a vantage point onto their map, their scheme, being 'external' to them. Marginalization;...has become fundamental for me. This position represents a total 'lack of social place.'"(Pg. 106)

Questions of the reading?

Can one really aim to become "blind to marginalization"?

Is this possibility accessible for anyone, or only those "looking down" at those marginalized below them?