I am with Marc on this, in more ways than one. I come from what could be considered a privileged background, compared to what Marc describes. Mine was a middle class academic family growing up on a beautiful wild beach in Australia (as different from Southend on Sea as you could get, except for the presence of the sea). However, like Marc, I didn¹t school well. I ran away from home at 15, living on communes and in surfer communities around the country (this was the beginning of the 70¹s, so that wasn¹t that unusual then). My parents, being liberals, could not find any way of dealing with this. The result was I never acquired a school or University qualification and am effectively self-taught.
Hippy life can burn you out. Too many drugs and too much disorder eventually get to you. I went off to live on my own, quietly, to concentrate on what I felt I could do well painting. I was again lucky, as in my childhood the family friends were mostly artists (my mother was a poet) so I learned both technical knowledge from a young age and also an appreciation of what the artist¹s life can be. It was an easy thing for me to slip into being. I never went to art college. So, it is strange for me that throughout my professional life I have often found myself working in art colleges and other academic environments. They are not alien to me, as I grew up in a studious context, with books and art. But it can be weird to teach when you can only imagine what it is like to be a student. However, one advantage I have is that I can argue, with conviction, that a degree is not a pre-requisite to being an artist. I can describe education as being about a personal journey into knowledge and creativity, not a piece of paper that will eventually validate you. My own experience can stand as evidence that you do not need to fulfil other people¹s expectations to achieve what you want. Education is the most effective force for social change I have come across and it should be the right of every individual to have as much of it as they want (or can stand). Education can (should) be a primary resource for transformation. It does not need to be formalised, but to create substantial resource infrastructure you sometimes need large institutions. When I argue the case for artists working in academic environments I do so from a conviction concerning education¹s transformative capacity, not from some idea that everyone needs to be appropriately validated. That validation is part of the problem with education. Best Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art [email protected] www.eca.ac.uk Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments CIRCLE research group www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ [email protected] www.littlepig.org.uk AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk From: marc garrett <[email protected]> Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity <[email protected]> Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 14:44:25 +0000 To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Call for Submissions: Multichannel VariableEconomies Screening Programme Deadline 28th January (Helen Sloan) Hi Curt & all, As someone who mainly comes from a self-education position, or rather from a place where I come from a very poor and violent working class family - which spent most of the time either being put in social care, whether this be in borstals and prison, plus family members vanishing because of the failures of 70's social (un)care systems. Just think of 'Cathy Come Home' by Ken Loach - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathy_Come_Home and may get some idea of my own personal history. Moving on from that I wish to mention that, for me education is one of the most important aspects of human development and a human right. Because I was not fortunate when younger to be able to experience a decent education, I had to discover various sneaky ways in finding information that the terrible school I was at, was not teaching me. My passion to discover what was going in the world beyond the chaos of my everyday circumstance was strong - even obsessed, whether it was in science, politics, technology, history, philosophy or art, I would bunk school regularly and spend an awful lot of my time in the Essex Library, which thankfully was in Southend-on-Sea, a town 50 miles from London. Some examples of what I read from the age of 12 and 13 and (of course) onwards, were books such as the The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich, The Divided Self by R. D. Laing, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. Carl Jung, Fear of Flying by Erica Jong, Herbert Read - especially Education Through Art and The Paradox of Anarchism, loads of art books. I am not saying that I understood these publications, but I am saying that it encouraged me to learn more and I have not stopped since. So, when I think of education I do not immediately think of official education as in universities or colleges. For I am a strong advocate of self-education, which also involves one being self critical as well. There is larger and broader context where individuals have the choice to explore life, art and all the other equally important subjects outside institution environments as well. One of my personal worries in respect of UK culture, which may be also the same regarding USA, although influenced through different historical, political situations is that, my own class - as in, working class has turned into a mass of gibbering X Factor driven bimbos. Of course, this is not a universal issue, but the consumer orientated mediation of our cultures via neo liberal agendas have not helped. I personally do not think that individuals themselves should deny any official forms of education. For there are some good educators here and there who are decent and authentic in appreciating how to learn themselves, and are active in the process of engaging with students in ways that attempt in spirit, to transcend beyond the bland and over-efficient trappings of slack management structures that manner are dealing with. Not just this, economics is factor in the real world and gaining degrees and learning via institutional means gets you a job. From that, if you are artist you get some proper money to fund your own projects on your own terms etc... The irony of learning outside of my school environment at that age was that, at 14 I was asked to go to college at weekends by the Essex council. Which was strange because all the other students were on average 17-20 years of age. I was told to go back to school or they would put me in a Borstal, so I did in the end. From this experience ideas around education have also been informed by writers such as 'Deschooling Society' by Ivan Illich, and other works such "Pedagogy of the Oppressed' by Paulo Friere. Yet, in contrast to all of this art (whatever medium) as a from of creative expression has always been my main agenda and always will be :-) wishing you well. marc > Hi Rob (and all), > > Fun quotes (for the prose alone). Yes. stones, glass houses, logs in > eyes and specks in eyes. The following quote is from the > acknowledgements of Rita Raley's 2009 "Tactical Media" book (which I > will teach this semester in a freshman "liberal studies introductory > colloquium" course called "Tactical Media / D.I.Y. Anarchy"): > > "It is my fervent wish that this book will become obsolete becaues > the world will have changed so dramatically that this study of > art-activism could only appar as a quaint historical artifact, its > latent pessimism misguided, its failure to imagine otherwise > indicative of the author's poverty of imagination. Until such a > point, I will continue to look to tactical media artists for > inspiration and guidance." (xii) > > Not that I myself look to "tactical media artists" for much > inspiration or guidance, and probably by the end of the course we > will have critiqued their approaches from contradictory perspectives > -- the work is too didactic/hamfisted/pragmatic; the work is too > disengaged/esoteric/impotent. (Throw a critical stone in the air and > you will hit a tactical media artist.) > > It is always amusing to me when artists and/or educators try to > out-ethicalize each other, as if any of us are all that directly, > pragmatically, quantitatively, measurably changing anything. For me, > art and teaching are a gamble -- a gamble that some kind of abstract > affective agency will eventually modulate actual aspects of the world > in some way that will "matter." Consequently, I admire others who are > making similar wagers. But I don't ever fool myself into believing > that I'm on the street feeding the poor. Because I've done that kind > of work as well, and it's quite a different thing. > > Rock & Roll Ain't No Pollution, > Curt > > > > >> There's more irony to be had in the quotes, that's why I posted them. >> That and, as Michael points out, they are funny. >> >> Art & Language are anti-academic but started and have often ended up in >> academia. They are politically committed but show at a gentrifying, >> market-leading gallery. Despite protests to the contrary they are >> radical artists who have artworld careers. I like them. >> >> It's very easy to criticise academia, artistic careerism, the art >> market, politically/socially committed art etc. from the security of >> one's own, virtuous, position outside of them. But there's no point >> outside the world where we can stand and point and laugh at it. >> >> We all need to be careful about glass houses, or at least work on >> smashing our own windows, whether our teaching means we are objectively >> in academia or our radical socially committed artistic practice means we >> are objectively part of gentrification. >> >> The most important criticism is self-criticism, although this may >> sometimes mean that we have to admit we are not criticising others >> enough. ;-) I've taught, I've wired up abandoned warehouses, I've >> attended private views, I write reviews for a techno-art-and-society web >> community. We are all guilty... >> >> - Rob. >> _______________________________________________ >> NetBehaviour mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >> > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201
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