FL∆G — a reflexive reflection

Before, during and after the actual event of FL∆G, ongoing relective and relexive work was involved. The relection(s) were undertaken by a series of what I would

59 Richard Stallman coined the idea of ‘copyleft in 1984. ‘Copyleft attempts to create a commons based on reciprocal rights and responsibilities — those who want to share the common resources have certain ethical obligations to respect the rights of other users. Everyone can add to the commons, but no one may subtract from it’.

Anna Nimbus, Copyright, Copyleft and the Creative Anti-Commons — A

Genealogy of Authors’ Property Rights, 2006, http://multitudes.samizdat.net/spip.

php?page=imprimer&id_article=2737, (accessed 20.11.11).

60 ‘Seminar/Lecture (S/L) photographs are taken in class rooms and lectures since 1995. It is an ongoing series letting me stay in touch with professors, lecturers knowledge and information that interest me. For each event several pictures are selected including the audience.’ See Ganahl’s website, http://www.ganahl.info/s_sl_index.html, (accessed 10.02.12).

characterise as relexive undertakings. The description of the build-up to FL∆G and the event itself has tried to give a sense of these. This next part could perhaps be seen as relexion on action on a relection-in-action, to hybridise Schön’s notion. Relection-on-action was continually important and in a sense interconnected and made visible aspects of the ongoing relexive praxis. Below I will discuss an explicit example of a relective undertaking, Cream Tea at the Emely, because it was the irst gathering after FL∆G where we met purposefully to relect on the event. Here we began to articulate the role and form of relection operating in FL∆G and articulate its potential for future events.

Funny enough, most of us went directly from FL∆G to the Hayward Conference about “De-schooling society”. I took this picture of one of the talks, and for me it sums up the failure of most discussions about ‘the educational turn’ or the challenging of social hierarchies. I mean a set-up like this, with selected speakers sitting on a stage and the audience being banned to the dark, is completely the opposite of a de- schooled society. There is just such a discrepancy between the content/ aims of the conference and what it actually does.

I guess the questions are: How can you really have an impact, instead of just imitating the current system or providing a new terminology for old institutions? How can you do your own thing, without unconsciously striving for the approval of the establishment? And why does this whole discussion remain strictly within the artworld/artschool?61

A few weeks after we had dismantled FL∆G, Rosalie invited the FL∆G group for a cream tea at her Emely research studio. It was here that we begun to tease out some of the things that we had achieved with FL∆G. What worked well, what had worked less well, what could have been different and what would we like to do next. Also present at this event were some students and artists associated with the Emely. This meant that we had to explain to these participants in the cream tea what we did and why, and to qualify statements in order for them to make sense to all present. Rosalie served tea and scones and Mario from FL∆G had baked biscotti. Rosalie started the session by showing images from the event (see images previous page). The do-it-yourself aesthetic of her presentation was in line with the use of ‘improvised forms’ identiied by Andrea Philips in her assessment

of the educational turn.62 _{However, for Rosalie and for her project, the Emely, this}

kind of aesthetic is entirely linked to content, in as much as the form and content are codependent, and the form is ‘knowing’, operating relexively as a relection on the context and content of the work. The Emely is the embodiment of Rosalie’s practice as an artist which happens to share many of the concerns of FL∆G.

61 Quote from Rosalie’s introduction at the Cream Tea. See the The Emely website. http:// emely.wikispaces.com/About+FL∆G, (accessed 11.10.11).

62 Andrea Phillips in ‘You Talkin’ to Me? Why is art turning to education’, Salon

A key difference between FL∆G and the Emely, however, is that the Emely is ‘owned’ by Rosalie. The Emely is sometimes a facilitator for other projects as it was to FL∆G by arranging the cream tea, the Emely as a project belongs to

Rosalie.63

After Rosalie’s presentation, we all discussed FL∆G, as an event we could all ‘own’, in different ways, which made for a very different experience to the crit- like structure of the tutor group, or other seminars — which involves discussing individual students work, sequentially. Here any critique implicates the speaker him/herself and interestingly criticality often stops short of fully expressing real concerns. By contrast, the kind of praxis evident in an art/education project such as FL∆G (with its incumbent sense of common ownership) enables relexion in Alvesson and Sköldberg’s sense. It is something that constantly refers back to

itself and its methods, but can also operate through non-word based forms such as we see in Rosalie’s images on p. 160, where she had connected together a display

of images on a home-made ‘clipboard’ to narrate the event.64 _{This board which}

operated somewhere between a clip-board and a frame, thus referencing forms of art display as well as a generic presentation style. From this Cream Tea at the Emely we developed a sense that the discussions were in some way an extension of FL∆G itself and as such we started to see a possibility for us to continue to work together, to form as a group, taking our name from FL∆G.

63 The Emely is a name for the need to set up your own thing. The Emely facilitates activities commonly classiied as hobby, play or art. The Emely functions on a small scale, under adverse conditions and despite better knowledge. The Emely will be in a permanent space by 2019, preferably in a semi-detached house in rural South Germany. Until then, different versions of the Emely are tried out in various locations. The Emely is another name for Rosalie Schweiker’s studio space. The Emely involves a great number of other people and institutions who are listed. See Emely website, http://emely.wikispaces.com/ what+is+the+Emely, (accessed 12.02.12).

64 Alvesson and Sköldberg, Relexive methodology.

Thus by discussing the Emely and its presence at FL∆G, we can make some sense of some of the different ways relexion operated within the project as a whole as well as within individuals practice. To recap: FL∆G grew out of ‘turning educational’, a project I initiated in order to see how relection in teaching and learning terms and in artistic practices could relexively relate to each other. I was particularly interested in how this would work in relation to students’ individual practice, how an intersection between FL∆G and their work could facilitate forms of relection for them, be it discursively through the symposium and SALT box or through making, for instance, in the case of the screens and the furniture. My aim was to move relection in learning and practice, from being a private undertaking into a public sphere. I wanted to see what alternatives there could be to the written forms of relection, that are often instrumentalised by the institution and which often involve a sense of there being a ‘right way to relect’ as described in Site 2. I had hoped to set in motion a process of relexive praxis, a shared practice that would be useful and productive for any student involved, and generative towards this research. I hoped it could also shine a new light on my own understanding of my own practice

as an artist.65 _{For this project I would not have a clear sense of competency to be}

shared with the students, but rather I was inding my way, learning and developing through this process of relexive praxis.

Rosalie’s work in FL∆G, the ‘residency application station’ can be employed to unpack some of these mechanisms. The miniature furniture, purpose built to contain application forms and writing material, as well as a ‘chair’ to sit on was very effective as a piece that spoke about the role of residencies for emerging and established artists and the anxieties that writing these kind of applications can involve. It had particular aesthetic qualities, a DIY recycled look as described above. It could also be seen as a form of institutional critique since the residency applied for was in the Emely, which was currently located within the MA studios in Camberwell College of Arts. In other words, someone could be ‘awarded’ a residency in the Emely without being an MA student, and could therefore ‘illicitly’ (from the institutions point of view), partake in an otherwise exclusive and select activity.

3.10 Conclusion

FL∆G was an event designed to explore practice as praxis. It sought to consider praxis by exploring those forms of relexion found in emerging art practices, but also by relating these relexive forms to more commonly understood research based methods, in for instance social science. FL∆G was also an art research

65 Aslaug Nyrnes, ‘Lighting from the Side: Rhetoric and Artistic Research’, Focus on Artistic

project which explored notions of pedagogy as art, appropriating the ‘educational turn’ in the art world as a method for working together with a group of students (and staff) instead of simply doing research on them.

This undertaking does not herald a new model for HE art educational research since it was speciic to a very particular time and place and entirely dependant on a set of cultural and social determinants including the education turn in the art world. This fact, however, is not a weakness of the project. On the contrary, the value of FL∆G lies in demonstrating the possibilities and potential for future projects to operate in a similar fashion, group projects that could link with a speciic concern, issue or aspect of the art world to enable a sustained period of relexive praxis in the art school. FL∆G underlines the value of joint endeavours, a fact which goes against the idea that students individual practices are always best developed by working on individual projects. Whilst Schön’s relective practicum is not an operational model in an art school like Chelsea, this kind of project in one sense sets up a relective practicum, but one which I would prefer to call a relective site, since as the tutors practice comes into the work less as a transmission model and more as an acted, enacted model. Which opens up a space for all involved to be mindful of how they ‘perform’ their practice. A project like this can be a way to create a site for praxis in the art school, where public shared practice moves from a more discursive plane to a performed situation.

Image 56. Video piece in FL∆G exhibition, Chain of Life, by Oscar Oldershaw and Joe Campbell. Photo: Alexander Blackman.

Conclusions:

Relection, Relevance and