(Un)Knowing the (Un)Known & The sphinx of the work to-be-made

This Centre for Arts and Learning online seminar will take the form of presentations and then discussion with Juuso Tervo and Dennis Atkinson. Tervo - a renowned historiographer of arts practices, will converse with Atkinson - an influential theorist of contemporary arts and pedagogy, before inviting questions from the audience.

(Un)Knowing the (Un)Known: Art Education Histories Between the Past and the Present, Juuso Tervo

In this brief presentation I draw from my recent studies on historical research in art education to address how art educators have tackled the relationship between the known and the unknown. What makes historical research an interesting context for such inquiry is that historical research is often understood to entail an interplay between sameness and difference, or between the know and the unknown. Whether the knowledge of the past is seen to prevent the past’s repetition (as Santayana had it) or to put the present in a different light, historical research “makes history” (as Michel de Certeau had it) by fusing the known with the unknown – and more than often in the name of a better future. This, in turn, frames historians as masters of difference who can harness the powers of the unknown in the production of a particular kind of history: one that connects the past, the present, and the future into a process we can understand, affect, and embody.

Starting from a premise that we might not know what history is and what it does, I offer some preliminary remarks for an “unmasterful” (à la Julietta Singh) approach to art education history – an approach that hopefully keeps history in question.

Known and Unknown: The sphinx of the work to-be-made, Dennis Atkinson

In responding to the theme of known and unknown this brief presentation will begin with Etienne Souriau’s notions of a ‘work to-be-made’ and his concept of instauration. It will consider art practice, pedagogic practice and education as works to be made which involve aporetic relations of known and unknown or between knowledge and knowing/doing, relations characterised by Souriau’s notion of the sphinx of the work.

Following this the presentation will consider Felix Guattari’s comments on art and the institution. It will consider the art of pedagogy as that which is concerned with negotiating a tension between the known and the unknown. This brings to the fore the notions of inter-dependence and response-ability from Donna Haraway. This contrasts the current intoxication with knowledge, measurement and control in educational policy with a view of education ‘on the horizon line’, a mutable process involving speculation and the particularities of sympoiesis (working-with). This contrast is developed further by considering the tensions between institutional aestheticisation and local processes of aesthesis and wonders if we require a new aesthetic paradigm in education. It concludes with some thoughts regarding the importance of speculation, pedagogical jurisprudence and cosmopedagogy.

Bio Juuso Tervo

Juuso Tervo is Assistant Professor in Arts-Based Research and Pedagogy at the Department of Art and Media at Aalto University, Finland. His research combines historical and theoretical inquiries in art and education, drawing from fields such as literary theory, philosophy of education, and philosophy of history. He currently serves as the editor-in-chief of Research in Arts and Education journal and co-runs Nordic Master in Visual Studies and Art Education double-degree MA program in collaboration with Aalborg University, Denmark. He received his PhD in Arts Administration, Education and Policy from The Ohio State University in 2014, and since then has published journal articles, book chapters, and co-edited a book Post-Digital, Post-Internet Art and Education (2021) together with Kevin Tavin and Gila Kolb. His most recent publications focus on practices of historiography and idea(l)s of historicity in art education research.

Bio Dennis Atkinson

Dennis Atkinson is Professor Emeritus, Goldsmiths University of London, Department of Educational Studies and the Centre for the Arts and Learning. He is a visiting professor at the Universities of Porto, Gothenburg and Barcelona. He taught in secondary schools in England from 1971-1988. At Goldsmiths he directed a number of academic programmes and was Head of Department of Educational Studies from 2006-2009. He was appointed Professor of Art in Education in 2005. He established the Research Centre for The Arts and Learning in the Department of Educational Studies in 2005 and was Director from 2005-2013. He was the Principal Editor of The International Journal of Art and Design Education from 2001-2009. In 2015 he was awarded The Ziegfeld Award by The United States Society for Education through Art for outstanding international contributions to art in education. He has published several books including, Art in Education: Identity and Practice (2003) Art, Equality and Learning: Pedagogies Against the State (2011), Art, Disobedience and Ethics: Adventures of Pedagogy (2017) and Pedagogies of Taking Care: Art, Pedagogy and the Gift of Otherness (2022).