Gverovic

Sea of People

‘Your silence will not protect you’. Audre Lourde¹

‘It has not yet dawned on us that education is something that women and men discovered experimentally, in the course of history. If it were clear to us that our capacity to teach arose from our capacity to learn, we would easily have understood the importance of informal experiences in the street, in the square, in the work place, in the classroom, in the playground, among the school staff of both teachers and administrative personnel’. Paulo Freire²

The artefact that I reflect on in this writing is formed of a series of artistic interventions which were the outcome of a workshop developed together in collaboration with a group of students³ on the rocks of the coast near Dubrovnik in Croatia.⁴ Following feedback from staff and students⁵ I discuss how I would re-approach this process after the experience of taking part in the Inclusive Teaching and Learning course.⁶

I am a visual artist and a lecturer in the BA Painting department at CCA. My art practice arises from my experiences as a person of Croatian origin who experienced geographic and cultural displacement as a result of the continuously reconfigured national and cultural boundaries following the turmoil in the territories of former Yugoslavia.⁷ Kim England talks about self-reflexivity being crucial to fieldwork and argues that research and fieldwork is always personal, and that positionality and biography play a central role in the field and in the writing.⁸ Whilst I experienced the transitional period of the dismantling of Yugoslavia and in turn Socialism, the issues of displacement and migration are not necessarily explicitly tangible in my work, rather they continue to have a significant impact on my approach to making work.⁹ My work and approach to teaching is informed by this sort of paradox – coming to terms with living in a place that’s at once entirely familiar and foreign.¹⁰

Collaboration with students in the process of conceiving the workshop and making different segments of the work offered a dialogue between constantly shifting positions, the idea of the workshop was built upon a collective voice, a voice that is both singular and multiple. In this sense the idea of diversity was embodied in the very process of making the artefact. Questions that came out of our initial group discussions were: 

• In what ways are we defined by notions of national identities, and how do those notions of nationality become changed when they’re displaced?

• What are the implications of not permitting other identities into our individual identity – in what ways might that extend to dismissing and denigrating experiences that are unfamiliar or at least not part of the notion that constitutes ‘our identity’?¹¹

The idea of initially placing this artefact on the rocks was to explore the idea of ‘casting a view’, looking out not onto buildings and landscape that might reveal geographical location and culture, but rather onto open sea and the imaginary of the land on the other side of that sea.¹² Locating the workshop in on the coast, looking out, with the city behind us, also encouraged thoughts about how people approaching the land from other places might perceive and be welcomed (or not) by that land. For the starting point of our process we each brought a selection of photographs that we felt dealt with issues that relate to the idea of the coast as a place of departure and a place of arrival. In his Reid Lecture titled ‘Mistaken Identities’ Kwame Anthony Appiah’s¹³ discuses how the language of articulating ones identity prevails in our everyday, often relating to conflict and contradiction, and how easy it is to make mistakes when discussing the notion of ones identity. Identities, Stuart Hall wrote, just like nations, are amalgamations, they are cumulative and a matter of becoming.¹⁴ How might we consider identity in terms of inclusivity and exclusivity? What does our identity include and exclude, where are the borders of that identity, what does it permit and resist? In what ways might identities feel obliged to assimilate?

In the artefact we were thinking about the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the current context, as a place that represents a significant topographic area in the imaginary of the West.¹⁵ Today The Mediterranean is a site of political conflict, where the concept of freedom and European unity meets the concept of otherness and ‘outsiders’, where migrants from Asia and Africa float for weeks awaiting for decisions on whether or not they’ll be allowed to dock on the coast.¹⁶

The photographs served as a score for a series of collaborative interventions focusing on the aspects of the identity of a place. Choosing coastal rocks as a location is also about being on the threshold of something unknown, an experience, another person.¹⁷ One of the steps in our process was to draw and re-interpret the image in the photograph that the students brought while having closed eyes, with others describing to them what they saw. Each photograph was interpreted through a collaborative body movement using minimal props (paints, coloured tape). In this way we excercised the idea of a ‘blow up’, scaling up, making something more visible. For example one photograph was of a life-saving belt for a large group. We interpreted the weave of this structure and inserted our own bodies into it, keeping them in rigid position, stopping them from drifting off. A collection of bodies could be seen as a metaphor for being trapped, or on the other hand a metaphor for solidarity and a tight community. 

One photograph was of personal belongings/clothing floating in the open sea.¹⁷ Students created a short choreography of body positions that the bodies might have had they been wearing the clothes.¹⁸ 

Students found empowering and enabling the opportunity to project possible different interpretations and meanings of these images though a process of collaborative choreography.¹⁹ They felt that it was important to build a level of trust through the process of drawing without seeing. We thought about what sorts of situations we might need for such sharing to be constructive and reflective? We felt that the collaborative aspect allowed a more supportive atmosphere and we ventured into areas and topics that we otherwise might not consider.²⁰

 In the PhD thesis ‘The address of spirituality in contemporary art’ the authors²¹ argue that the art viewer today can potentially be provoked by art to reconsider or re-create oneself – basically to rethink what ones own identity may be, or in Richard Rorty’s terms, to ‘revocabularize’. ²²

How can we refuse status quo, and re-approach and re-imagine the idea of a place? A place where explorers, seamen, travelers and recently tourists travel to, both in terms of travels in the imagination and physical travel, in each case meeting with fantasy and actuality.²³ And, who has potential to imagine and to re-imagine, re-invent a perception of a place?²⁴

After presenting the artefact to staff and students at Camberwell I received valuable feedback on the notion of identity and positionality which outlined areas and further developed questions that might be incorporated in the process of re-making the artefact.

• How do we develop a level of trust?

• What sort of conditions do we need in order to take risks?

• What possible methods are there for sharing these experiences and what spaces/situations do we need for such sharing to be constructive and reflective?

• How could we see through other peoples eyes and can others see what we see? 

When discussing racialised identities in Yorskhire cricket Thomas Fletcher discusses how sport can articulate wider social stabilities and instabilities – racism, patriarchy, homophobia, class and many other prejudices.²⁵ 

Thinking how art could be used as a platform to engage with specific social and cultural issues related to the idea of nation/nationalism, xenophobia, religion, homophobia – I would try to re-approach the initial stages of the artefact through more tightly directed structure. The model of a coast as a starting point for a collection of 2D material is a model that can easily be appropriated to a different location (i.e. London).²⁶ ‘Casting a view’ might take place through the window of a building, observing a specific location and its vicinity; but we might also think about casting a view back in time over histories, economies, and cultural background. Alternative locations could open up horizons – open out onto projections that avoid closure and the safe-guarding of ones’ current context.

Feedback also included a comment on collaboration and its relation to the notion of solidarity, appropriation and taking risks.²⁷ Although the collaborative aspect allowed a certain level of loosing inhibitions, one should be careful that the process of translation of individual input into a collaborative voice doesn’t diminish valuable individual perspectives.²⁸ In future workshops it would be vital to maintain a good balance of individual perspectives and expressions, alongside collaborative voice.

I have explored a series of pedagogical and art experiments that play a crucial role in thinking further about positionality and intersectionality within art discourse and practice. I engaged with questions about how art can be a bridge that offers a link to other experiences, how it might facilitate embodied experiences, and act as a vehicle for trying to see something (a place, an identity) from another perspective. I have discussed how this artefact could engage with critical pedagogy, enhancing diversity in higher education and attribute to providing multiple perspectives in the process of art making.

Footnotes

1. Lourde, Audre. Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Essays and Poems, (Silverpress, 2017). 

2. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, (Rowman and Littlefield, 1998). p.47

3. Artefact was conceived in collaboration with Anđela Bušurelo, Silvia Čeperković, Mara Piskulić, Mihaela Zlojić, Helena Radoš, Bruno Di Reda, Karmen Kovačić Karamatić, Haron Mehić, Ivana Dražić Selmani, Tina Gverović, and Siniša Ilić (In collaboration with Luko Sorkočević High School in Dubrovnik). The participants in the workshop were in their final year of finishing high school, i.e. at that very moment when possibilities might seem open and one is thinking about what comes next – an application to a university, a job apprenticeship etc. 

4. Dubrovnik is also a city where I attended high school. 

5. I refer to feedback from my tutor and my peers during taking the course Inclusive Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, and staff and students from the First Year BA Painting course at Camberwell College of Arts where I have been a lecturer since 2007.

6. The Inclusive Teaching and Learning in Higher Education stand-alone unit engages with issues of equality and diversity in the teaching curriculum related to subjects of art, design and communication. There has been a growing interest in choosing art and design with recent generations of students from diverse backgrounds and educational experiences. This course teaches staff valuable and necessary critical inclusive pedagogical theories and offers insight into practical examples of teaching in art education settings. See further reading: Richards, A. and Finnigan, T. (2015) Embedding equality and diversity in the curriculum: An art and design practitioner’s guide. York: Higher Education Academy. Available at: https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/system/files/resources/eedc_art_and_design_online.pdf (Accessed: 03. 04. 2020)

7. The wars in the former Yugoslavia is a term for the wars that took place from 1991–1999 between Serbia and the federations of Yugoslavia that were seeking independence. Under the presidency of Josip Broz Tito the country was in 1945 first named the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia and soon renamed to Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia from 1945–1963, and from 1963–1991 it was named the Social Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Tito was president until his death in 1980 when a collective presidency was formed. It was constituent of six Socialist Republics (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Serbia, and two Socialist Autonomous Provinces Kosovo and Vojvodina.).

8.  In Getting personal: reflexivity, positionality, and feminist research, Kim V. L. England talks about self-reflexivity being crucial to fieldwork. England, Kim. (1994), ‘Getting personal: reflexivity, positionality, and feminist research’, The Professional Geographer, 46(1), pp. 80-9. Available at: https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10214/1811/18- England.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y (Accessed: 07.01. 2020). p 244, and pp 251-252

9. With the rapid shift in Croatia from Socialism to Capitalism, many people were suddenly unable to recognise the society in which they ended up inhabiting. Everything had changed and nothing had changed, and for many that was extremely disorientating and alienating.

10. Continually re-approaching and representing a subject, stems from an interest in privileging the multiple voice, which both destabilises and renews that subject. Our sense of self is shaped by affiliations.

11. Thinking about movements of people and the relationship between assimilation and identity makes me think of ‘Accent Elimination’, a video installation by artist Nina Katchadourian that deals with complexities of assimilation and self-image. Her Armenian father and Finland-Swedish mother met in Beirut in 1964. Her parents and herself have been born in different countries and have lived in different countries over the course of their lives therefore theirs accents are distinctive but hard-to-place. The artist worked with her parents and professional speech improvement coach in order to “neutralize” her parents’ accents and then teach each of them to her. The work is a six-channel piece, with monitors showing a synchronized conversation, playing out first in their natural accents, and at the end in their ‘eliminated’ accents. The work points to the complexities of assimilation and identity, caught between trying to preserve marks of ones cultures on one hand and to minimise them in order to belong to another, on the other. What is fascinating is the content of what they are speaking about which is a complex meandering of ones displacement both in terms of recalling the places where they feel they are from and the journey of learning to loose their accents. Katchadourian, Nina. Accent Elimination, 2005. Six monitors, three channels of synchronized video, three single-channel video loops, six media players, three sets of headphones, three pedestals, two benches, dimensions variable. I saw this installation as part of Armenian Pavilion shown as part of 56th Venice Biennial in 2015 in Venice, Italy. Armenian Pavilion won the Golden Lion.

12. From 1358 until 1808 Republic of Ragusa (today’s Dubrovnik) functioned as a thalassocracy, a state with primarily maritime realms. On one hand the state was isolated, with tight city borders and with siege mentality but on the other it was a state with international trading and diplomacy that forced it to embrace diverse cultures. 

13. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Mistaken Identities, 2016. Reith Lecture series. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b07z43ds (Accessed: 01. 03. 2020)

14. Stuart Hall talked about that identities are a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as a matter of ‘being’; and, they are subject to transformation. Hall, Stuart. New ethnicities, in J. Donald. and A. Rattansi (eds) ‘Race’,Culture and Difference. (London: Sage, 1992). pp. 252-260

15. The coast of the Mediterranean from the romantic European landscape (renaissance, baroque, later 19 century- restorative health destinations or adventure) to a place of collective holiday destination later in the 20^th century. The Mediterranean is a place through which people passed, to which they came to and came from (migrations to South, North America, Australia etc.).

16. Migration routes partly use the Mediterranean as the most convenient route to take them to the European continent and to the illusion of safety and stability.

17. The Artefact was filmed by the Croatian National Television as a part of the program that documented artworks produced in the run up to Dubrovnik’s application for European City of Culture of 2020.

18. In the contemporary climate of enforced travel, the seeking of political asylum, basic livelihood, and escape from violence and oppression, the place from which you set off might well be idealized, as might be the place in your dreams of the far-away places that you’re travelling to, determined of course by imaginings of a better tomorrow. The place where belongings are washed ashore, where animate and inanimate cargo attempt to meet with the land.

19. It is important to mention another photograph that was used in the artefact – this is an image of a person that appears to be shouting on the rocks. We interpreted the image through body movements that resembled limbs stretched out, reaching out toward one another while speaking a different word that in their terms related to the idea of giving voice to someone or something. Audre Lourde speaks of transformation of silence into language as an act of self-revelation, a self-realisation. Lourde, Audre. Transformation of Silence into Language and Action in Sister Outsider, (Crossing Press, Berkley, 2007). p 42

20. In relation to the importance of building a level of trust between each other it feels relevant to mention a valuable reference from one of our course’s blog assignments on the topic of disability. The fact that there is lack of representation, diversity, and inclusion in particular of people of colour within the disability community (#DisabilityTooWhite – interview with Vilissa Thompson) reminds me immediately of Freire’s idea of the ‘culture of silence’ that instils a self-image as marginalised and oppressed. On the question of allowing the voices to be magnified rather than being overpowered or silenced – I found it very interesting how Vilissa Thompson brings the discussion on the topic of allies and advocates (both disabled and non disabled) and how to think further about the nature of these roles. Speaking for someone else doesn’t necessarily give voice, on the contrary it can be silencing. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans Myra Bergman Ramos (Bloomsbury, London, 2001). Thompson, Vilissa. #DisabilityTooWhite articl, interview. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/confronting-the-whitewash_b_10574994?guccounter=1 (Accessed: 20.03. 2020)

 21. Buranelli, Francesco, Florian Roithmayr, and Lois Rowe. The address of spirituality in contemporary art, 2011. PhD thesis, University of the Arts London and Goldsmiths College.

22. Rorty, Richard. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton University Press, 1979). In this publication the author argues how philosophical paradigms may shift and their associated philosophical “problems” can be considered the result of the new metaphors and vocabularies.

23. In ‘Travelling Cultures’ Steve Cross (Associate Dean, School of Media LCC) talks about students and staff exploring religion, belief and faith identity as part of a Personal Essay assignment. They consider notions of identity and culture as fluid, as opposed to a fixed and stable entity. I found their approach very useful in reflecting and thinking about some of my teaching experiences – especially with regard to thinking about contemporary aspects and repercussions of migration and the effect these will continue to have on peoples identity. Cross, Steve.  Travelling Cultures. UAL website. https://religiousliteracy.myblog.arts.ac.uk/curriculum-case-studies/2418-2/ (Accessed: 01. 03. 2020)

24. I find it relevant to draw a link to the research by Jan Burke and Jackie McManus into the student selection process conducted in UK higher education institutions. They outline how ‘inequalities’ and ‘exclusions’ are present although transparent admission procedures are in place. They examined the selection process in which tutors base their decision on judgment who has and who does not ‘potential’ and ‘ability’. With regard to the artefact discussed here I would like to expand on the notion on ‘potential’ and ‘ability’ and ask Who has potential to imagine and to re-imagine, re-invent a perception of a place?

Burke, Penny Jane. and McManus, Jackie. (2009) ‘Art for a few: Exclusions and misrecognitions in higher education admissions practices’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(5), pp 699-712. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01596306.2011.620753 (Accessed: 9 January 2018). p 6

25. Fletcher, Thomas. ‘Being inside and outside the field”: An exploration of identity, positionality and reflexivity in inter-racial research, Leisure Identities and Authenticity, (LSA Publication, academia.edu, 2010). p 2

26. I am planning to re-approach and redo the artefact with my First Year BA students in the Painting department at Camberwell College of Arts as soon as we are able to meet in person (due to lockdown).

27. Bell Hooks famously writes about how teachers must be willing to restore a spirit of risk in their teaching which I would like to think is about creating the right conditions for individual voices to feel uninhibited. Hooks, Bell. Talking back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, (Between the Lines, CA, 1989). p 100

28. In Getting Personal, Kim England points out that while trying to ‘conceptualise the difference and diversity’ we might be ‘appropriating voices of others and that one needs to incorporate the voices of “others” without colonizing them. England, Kim. (1994), ‘Getting personal: reflexivity, positionality, and feminist research’, The Professional Geographer, 46(1), pp. 80-9. Available at: https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10214/1811/18- England.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y (Accessed: 07. 01. 2020). p 242

Bibliography

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Mistaken Identities, 2016. Reith Lecture series. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b07z43ds (Accessed: 01. 03. 2020)

Buranelli, Francesco, Florian Roithmayr, and Lois Rowe. The address of spirituality in contemporary art, 2011. PhD thesis, University of the Arts London and Goldsmiths College. 

Burke, Penny Jane. and McManus, Jackie. (2009) ‘Art for a few: Exclusions and misrecognitions in higher education admissions practices’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(5), pp 699-712. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01596306.2011.620753 (Accessed: 09. 01. 2018) 

Cross, Steve.  Travelling Cultures. UAL website. https://religiousliteracy.myblog.arts.ac.uk/curriculum-case-studies/2418-2/ (Accessed: 01. 03. 2020)

Lourde, Audre. Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Essays and Poems, (Silverpress, 2017) 

Lourde, Audre. Transformation of Silence into Language and Action in Sister Outsider, (Crossing Press, Berkley, 2007)

England, Kim. (1994), ‘Getting personal: reflexivity, positionality, and feminist research’, The Professional Geographer, 46(1), pp. 80-9. Available at: https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10214/1811/18- England.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y (Accessed: 07.01. 2020)

Fletcher, Thomas. ‘Being inside and outside the field”: An exploration of identity, positionality and reflexivity in inter-racial research Leisure Identities and Authenticity, (LSA Publication,academia.edu, 2010)

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, (Rowman and Littlefield, 1998) 

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans Myra Bergman Ramos (Bloomsbury, Lodnon, 2001)

Hall, Stuart. New ethnicities, in J. Donald. and A. Rattansi (eds) ‘Race’,Culture and Difference. (London: Sage, 1992)

Hooks, Bell. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, (Between the Lines, CA, 1989

Katchadourian, Nina. Accent Elimination, 2005. Six monitors, three channels of synchronized video, three single-channel video loops, six media players, three sets of headphones, three pedestals, two benches, dimensions variable. Armenian Pavilion at 56th Venice Biennial, 2015 in Venice, Italy.

Richards, Aisha and Finnigan, Terry. (2015) Embedding equality and diversity in the curriculum: An art and design practitioner’s guide. York: Higher Education Academy. Available at: https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/system/files/resources/eedc_art_and_design_online.pdf (Accessed: 03. 04. 2020)

Rorty, Richard. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, (Princeton University Press, 1979).

Thompson, Vilissa. #DisabilityTooWhite articl, interview. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/confronting-the-whitewash_b_10574994?guccounter=1 (Accessed: 20.03. 2020)

The body moves slowly as it hits another body, the breath is heavy, pulse is beating slowly but as strong as some sort of unstoppable pump. The image goes black but the beat continues. The image reappears again. This is the scene that keeps looping in the video titled Bear by Steve McQueen.¹Bear is Steve McQueen’s first major film. Although not directly political work, it raises issues about race and violence.I saw this work more than a decade ago and can still recall the impact that it had one me. The effect is visceral, bodily, the sound of the beat moves inside you – you feel the body, the heart beat – although the film is silent.The beat that connects with your own beat.

The next scene is also driven by the sound that comes and goes, and it is a sound that rips through you – a sound of going down into a mineshaft. The image that appears captures bodies in the elevator that drops down. Bodies are in semi darkness. You see them lit by different coloured lights that come and go as the lift sinks down. Film Western Deep²was shot in the Tau Tona mine in South Africa, the world’s deepest gold mine. The footage is quite soft and sensual, bodily, and warm, intimate and then the sound comes on and pulls it back to the moment of going down, of sinking into the shaft. The thoughts that flood through my mind are about the brutality of the economy that still drives the contemporary exploitation that relays on the old colonial heritage and their resources.

How can the complexity of such issues be articulated in art without being too literal or on the other hand too abstract or ambiguous. It feels like there needs to be a way of translating these issues and making them personal, bringing them close to body, your body – body that feels another body. 

This brings me to the idea of the common goal, common ground, a shared experience as talked about in the pedagogies of Freiere.³How can a work of art make a difference? Or translate the issues at stake that in turn instigate a difference? What are the methods of teaching the making of such art?

Reading ‘Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design’⁴made me think about my different experience of approaches and interventions that are currently taking place in order to tackle the gap of attainment of students of colour in Art and Design area of teaching. It feels that a way of developing work that comes from diverse personal experiences of students in itself focuses on identity and enables heterogeneous and diverse learning. However it would be very important to have resources to create different group situations and activities where all students can participate and where their experiences can be shared rather that students feeling isolated in their accomplishments (1-2-1 tutorials). And I am wondering how this may be possible in the future when admission numbers are higher every year and contact time is shorter?

Thinking about the importance of developing methods and strategies of teaching art from student experiences which in turn leads to students feeling empowered (as discussed by Hahn Tapper in ‘A pedagogy of social justice education: social identity, theory and intersectionality’)⁵I would like to briefly talk about my most recent teaching experience. Since the recent move to the online mode of teaching together with my tutorial group we have developed strategies of integrating student experience into the curriculum. Students are currently based in different regions of the world, different time zones and in different life situations and backgrounds.Through a series of online workshops, discussions and group tutorials we have come up with a set of methods and strategies that aide art making under lock down. These came solely from different experiences that students found themselves in and in turn created a common goal – a structure, a glossary of common methods for art making. Students realized how their methods could be shared and used by others and this in turn made them feel empowered and emancipated. They also started involving and inviting one another to organize different online platforms for featuring work.

I wanted to find different ways (specific to the current teaching situation) of articulating the experience of teaching as one that exists between myself and students rather than being passed onto students. Thinking of ways that students can teach students, my role being a guide in this process rather than one that dictates and leads. Also, thinking how this relates to the Frerian thought of ‘transforming rather than perpetuating the status quo’ which is crucial in the process of realizing ones identity and freedom. 

It is upsetting to hear recent testimonies of students from Rhode Island School of Design (The Room of Silence)⁶with regards to not having critical environments that instigate discussions related to issues of race and identity. Different accounts expose insecurities of people in educational settings, their feelings of othernessand of not-belonging. Creating a video exposes the lack of such environment and enables dialogue between students and the institution, which is an important first step in tackling these issues. Watching it also made me think of the importance of having a platform (video in this case) that brings together different voices with a common goal that in itself has transformative potential. Thinking about what other platforms, places and forms/ways for discussion can be instigated – I found fascinating the example of Macoco Floating School from SoN website⁷that became not only an important physical place of education but an empowering idea of the possibility of transformation.

 

1. Steve McQueen. Bear,1996. Video b/w (10 minutes, 35 seconds)

2. Steve McQueen. Western Deep Film, 2002. Super 8mm, shown as video, colour, sound (Running time: 24 min 12 sec) 

3. Paulo Freire. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans Myra Bergman Ramos (Bloomsbury, Lodnon, 2001)

4. Finnigan and Richards. Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design.2016

https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/retention-and-attainment-disciplines-art-and-design

5. Hahn Tapper. A pedagogy of social justice education: social identity, theory and 
intersectionality.2013. (Pp. 411- 
417) https://www.abrahamsvision.org/files/A_Pedagogy_of_Social_Justice_Education_A__Hahn_Tapper.pdf

6. The Room of Silence. https://vimeo.com/161259012

7. Macoco Floating School from SoN website. https://www.shadesofnoir.org.uk/

I was recently part of a group crit (Camberwell BA Painting) where a student presented a project that referenced her dexterous spiritual heritage. Parts of her family have different beliefs to one another due to them being resettled in different locations at various times in their family history. In her work the student referenced fragments of vastly different religious and spiritual iconography including myths and storytelling elements. The outcome prompted very interesting discussions among the rest of the students and staff. We all felt that in a way all heritage (with regards to our beliefs and faiths) could be considered as compositions and influences of different cultures, at least to an extent. We felt that through sharing our experiences of faith, belief and religion we could associate in different ways to particular elements of her work. It was a very valuable experience to try to think about how to articulate ones own beliefs and to think of the ways these could be shared with students. This experience also made me think about what sort of situations and spaces we might need in order to share these reflections? In the PhD thesis ‘The address of spirituality in contemporary art’ the authors¹ argue that the art viewer today can potentially be provoked by art to reconsider or re-create oneself – basically to rethink what ones own identity may be, or in Richard Rorty’s terms, to ‘revocabularize’.² This makes me think of how in ‘Travelling Cultures’³ Steve Cross (Associate Dean, School of Media LCC) talks about students and staff exploring religion, belief and faith identity as part of a Personal Essay assignment. They consider notions of identity and culture as fluid, as opposed to a fixed and stable entity. I found their approach very useful in reflecting and thinking about some of my teaching experiences – especially with regard to thinking about contemporary aspects and repercussions of migration and the effect these will continue to have on peoples identity.

I found that some of the resources found on the UAL website ‘Religion, belief and faith identities in learning and teaching’⁴ offer valuable and in-depth examples of visual narratives of Christianity, and of artists referencing Islam and Christianity. It made me think how in this contemporary moment it is crucial for our students to also have such an in-depth access to resources and broad research of other beliefs, faiths and religions apart from Islam and Christianity. One of my BA painting students recently started developing work that relates to his own wellbeing. The work recalled a particular spiritual routine of his family beliefs. He recently moved to UK from Hong Kong and found that he is often experiencing high levels of stress and unrest. He discovered that implementing specific routine of lighting an incense at specific times in the day calms him down and enables him to feel rested, to think, and make work. Practising this routine led him to research further aspects of smoke and to start developing poignant work that references different materialisations of smoke. He is a very shy student and it took him a whole semester to be able to articulate the source of his practical research, partly, he explained, because he felt that others couldn’t relate to his specific experience. It would be very beneficial that the students from different backgrounds have access to a plethora of research and resources on diverse beliefs, faiths and religions.

Thinking about movements of people and the relationship between assimilation and identity makes me think of ‘Accent Elimination’, a video installation by artist Nina Katchadourian⁵ that deals with complexities of assimilation and self-image. Her Armenian father and Finland-Swedish mother met in Beirut in 1964. Her parents and herself have been born in different countries and have lived in different countries over the course of their lives therefore theirs accents are distinctive but hard-to-place. The artist worked with her parents and professional speech improvement coach in order to “neutralize” her parents’ accents and then teach each of them to her. The work is a six-channel piece, with monitors showing a synchronized conversation, playing out first in their natural accents, and at the end in their ‘eliminated’ accents. The work points to the complexities of assimilation and identity, caught between trying to preserve marks of ones cultures on one hand and to minimise them in order to belong to another, on the other. What is fascinating is the content of what they are speaking about which is a complex meandering of ones displacement both in terms of recalling the places where they feel they are from and the journey of learning to loose their accents. What is it that makes us who we are? How do we decide who we are? How does identity work? Our sense of self is shaped by affiliations. This brings me to the Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Reid Lecture titled ‘Mistaken Identities’⁶ where he discuses how the language of articulating ones identity prevails in our everyday, often relating to conflict and contradiction, and how easy it is to make mistakes when discussing the notion of ones identity. He discuses identity through four central categories: creed, country, colour and culture.Particular people form their identities in particular places at particular times in history, which at that particular time may have a negative impact on their surrounding. He also discusses how easy it is for those identities to change and reform. In the part where he discuses creed, he argues that scriptures are not only open to interpretation but they require reinterpretation. Different religious communities shift their views about gender over and over again. He also argues that religion is not only matter of belief but of fellowship and performance. What you do and who do you do it with? Faith is a performance as much as it is a proposition. The things that we do together in fellowship with others is at the core of the faith. He also talks about the relationship of doctrine and practice and change of practice can lead to change of belief. 

This brings me back to thinking about the contemporary aspects of migration where people are continually exposed to change, which inevitably keeps having different effects on their sense of identity. In relation to discussing multiculturalism in western Europe in Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Educationone of the authors Tariq Modood(in the heading on multiculturalism)⁷ discuss the role that multiculturalism has not only in actively supporting cultural diversity but in re-making the public sphere in order to include marginalised identities. In relation to using the term post-immigration,⁸ perhaps we could consider this term outdated in that it doesn’t justly reflect the migration situation in the current state of Europe and United Kingdom. This reminds me of the relevance of the work ‘Dada Migrant Wallpaper’ (16-19) that I saw by Sonya Boyce⁹ currently on display in Kunsthalle Vienna as part of exhibition ‘…of bread wine, cars, security and peace’.¹⁰ The work is wallpaper that captures contemporary migrant bodies in various contorted positions accompanied by brief texts which simultaneously reference notions of freedom and notions of hostility that these bodies encounter on a daily basis.

1. Buranelli, Francesco, Florian Roithmayr, and Lois Rowe. The address of spirituality in contemporary art, 2011. PhD thesis, University of the Arts London and Goldsmiths College. 
2. Rorty, Richard. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton University Press) 1979. In this publication the author argues howphilosophical paradigms may shift and their associated philosophical “problems” can be considered the result of the new metaphors and vocabularies.
3. Travelling Cultures. UAL website where Steve Cross (Associate Dean, School of Media LCC) discuses belief, faith and religion identity as part of student assignment.
https://religiousliteracy.myblog.arts.ac.uk/curriculum-case-studies/2418-2/(accessed 01.03.2020)
4. Religion, belief and  faith identities in learning and teaching. UAL website https://religiousliteracy.myblog.arts.ac.uk/curriculum-case-studies/(accessed 01.03.2020) I have accessed following resources through this site:
a) Article: The groundbreaking artists challenging religion through art (Dazed, 2016) https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/28290/1/the-groundbreaking-artists-challenging-religion-through-art(accessed 01.03.2020)
b) Podcast: When modern art meets religious iconographyhttps://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/podcast-modern-art-friend-or-foe-of-religious-iconography(accessed 01.03.2020)
c) Podcast: Faith & Fashion.https://www.arts.ac.uk/research/current-research-and-projects/fashion-design/faith-and-fashion(accessed 01.03.2020)
d) Tarlo, Emma. Visibly Muslim : Bodies of Faith (Berg publishers, New York) 2009.
5. Katchadourian, Nina. Accent Elimination, 2005. Six monitors, three channels of synchronized video, three single-channel video loops, six media players, three sets of headphones, three pedestals, two benches, dimensions variable. I saw this installation as part of Armenian Pavilion shown as part of 56th Venice Biennial in 2015 in Venice, Italy. Armenian Pavilion won the Golden Lion.
6. Appiah, Kwame Anthony.  Mistaken Identities, 2016. Reith Lecture series. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b07z43ds(accessed 01. 03. 2020)
7. Modood, Tariq and Craig Calhoun. Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education. Stimulus paper, 2015. (p 6 – 7)
8. Modood, Tariq and Craig Calhoun. Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education. Stimulus paper, 2015. (p 8 – 13)
9. Boyce, Sonia. Dada Migrant Wallpaper, 2016 – 2019. Wallpaper, dimensions variable. 
10. ‘…of bread wine, cars, security and peace’, group exhibition in Kunsthalle Vienna, Austria, 2020. The curatorial collective What, How & for Whom / WHW (Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić und Sabina Sabolović) (directors of Kunsthalle Wien) started their new program with a group exhibition titled ‘…of bread, wine, cars, security and peace’. The title is taken from the book Globalization and the Manufacture of Transient Event’, written by Lebanese author and artist Bilal Khbeiz in 2003 (published by Ashkal Alwan, Beirut), who looks into the differences between the dreams of people in the Global South and the Global North.

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