Writing

Mid 2011 the idea of ‘The Educators New Clothes’ came to me, it emerged from my art and teaching practice.

My art practice is primarily concerned with processing matter [material], in a literal concrete sense, the stuff that collects and appears about me through my living, and in a figurative way, as the alchemical matter, the dross [shadow/psychological unfolding] that develops through my being human. What’s the matter?

Teaching had taken me through lecturing Design and creative processing at a tertiary institution, and teaching Design and Visual art at a high school. Over 11 years I noticed changes in learners’ attitudes and aptitudes. I became increasingly aware how established learning structures have Learning as their least concern. How there appears to be a disconnection with information, meaning, skill, accountability, application and actuality.

I have a sense of urgency about this, coupled with a feeling of duty.

The move to public performance places the attention of the piece on the interaction between the work and the audience. The aim is to encourage opinion, conversation and discussion around education, that this concern includes everyone. Initially I wanted to perform in official public civic spaces but after sufficient proposals were declined, and some really good feedback given to me, the agenda is to take the work to the streets, to do it everywhere and anywhere.

I feel more empowered by this as it rubs against people directly, without the interface of galleries and officialdom. It becomes a part of everyday life, as with education and learning. I am using social media formats to record the interactions, encouraging the audience to upload photos and text.

Through my teaching practice I developed quite a collection of paper. This paper is comprised of mark sheets, notes, absentee forms, lesson plans, student projects; the paper that collects through the course of teaching and educating. Much of this paper could be seen as unnecessary. Many of the procedures and projects which use these paper forms may be seen as unnecessary, and have very little to do with learning, and maybe at lot with education. Often the paper can not be thrown away directly, as it needs to be kept for quality assurance. Some documents are confidential and may need to be destroyed; procedures and rules which literally result in substantial volumes of paper.

A few years ago I was experimenting with paper and knitting and developed a technique which produced a knittable paper yarn. The technique is to stitch the paper on a sewing machine with thread, reinforcing the paper, and tearing long lengths which are then rolled into balls of yarn. The yarn is then knitted on large knitting needles producing a flexible spreading fabric. These procedures are thus the ‘Menditations’; collecting, stitching, tearing, rolling, knitting.

Learning has changed dramatically since I was at school. Teachers then represented the bastions of knowledge. They were the people who knew everything and held access to all that knowledge. Now google does. There is so much information and yet few clues on how to make sense of it all. Maybe the ‘what is learnt’ is less important than the ‘how we learn’ and ‘how it’s done to us’ and ‘how will I go on learning for the rest of my life once I have the certificate which says I am capable of  doing 30% of something’. I often felt like a fraud when I taught. The colliding of official procedure and content, my gut, genuine inspiration and enthusiasm, technology, the historical and traditional, the new now and contemporary, blossoming minds and accountability; this piece is making a mends.

Some reflections on the work:

• Collections of paper: collecting and holding onto stuff which loses and gains significance through time.
• Storing and archiving, sentimentality, procedure and officiousness.
• Flat surfaces which are regular, uniform white and marked in black.

What is useful, valid and appropriate from the past?

Things can be mended through stitching. Stitching can hold things together. There are threads running through everything. The mechanistic industrial thrumming of a system.

Tearing divides and separates. It makes long lengths, chains, sequences. It deconstructs and develops new usefulness.

Rolling turns chaotic spaghetti into a new rounded, compact integrated form.

Knitting develops flexible fabric which adapts and moulds according to various contexts, whist maintaining its integrity. It looks intestinal and brain-like. Intelligent assimilation/assimilating intelligently.