Education

This book will be an original and indispensable resource for all who
believe in the importance of art in the wider educational realm. Framing the recent
"educational turn" in the arts within a broad historical and social
context, this anthology raises fundamental questions about how and what should be
taught in an era of distributive rather than media-based practices. Among the many
sources and arguments traced here is second-wave feminism, which questioned dominant
notions of personal and institutional freedom as enacted through art teaching and
practice. Similarly, education-based responses by the art community to the
catastrophes of World War II and postcolonial conflict critically inform
contemporary art confronting the interrelationships of education, power, market
capitalism, and--as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri describe it--the global
condition of war. These writings by artists, philosophers, educators, poets, and
activists center on three recurring and interrelated themes: the notion of
"indiscipline" in theories and practices that challenge boundaries of all
kinds; the present and future role of the art school; and the turn to pedagogy as
medium in a diverse range of recent projects. Other writings address such issues as
instrumentalism and control, liberation and equality, the production and the
politics of culture, and the roots of research-based practice and experimental
participatory works.