Category: Colloque

HEAD Projects

How to survive in the Swiss art school jungle
The project of Daniel Zea, Hyunji Lee and Andrea Nucamendi is concerned with the inequalities faced by non-European students at Swiss art schools. The research group that understands itself as a collective has identified several administrative and everyday challenges structuring the marginalization of non-European students at HEAD such as money and paperwork, language, artistic and conceptual references, or the lack of courses that transmit basic technical skills. While focusing on the students’ lived experiences, their survival strategies, and their everyday and artistic responses to discrimination, the collective is also asking how a more just treatment of non-European students could contribute to a more successful internationalisation of the art school. These questions will be addressed through the creation of a web-series in which non-European students and teachers speak about their experiences and (strategic) responses to discriminations (see https://vimeo.com/search?q=coKo+nuts for first videos). This video documentation seeks to (1) make visible and raise consciousness about mechanisms of exclusion, (2) to equip non-European students with tools to perceive of (and cope) with discrimination, and (3) to think about the ways in which art schools could enhance their process of internationalisation, notably by making reflection on structural inequalities an integral part of the curriculum.

Alterity put into center
Martine Anderfuhren, Patricio André, Claire Bonnet, Fabio Fernandes Da Cruz and Ivan Gulizia from HEAD’s department of visual communication seek to initiate a series of events that stresses the ways in which students differ from the school’s assumed norm. In a first step of preliminary inquiry, the research team has identified strategies which students deploy to tame and curtail their “alterity” over the course of their study. They developed a definition of “alterity” and found five dynamics – assimilation, concealment, confrontation, resistance, and autonomy – which were tested with the help of a self-administrated questionnaire. The team’s initial concern with the tools students and lecturers may seize in order to call attention to the art school’s internal “others” has increasingly given way to the question of how an informal networking and mentoring system could be developed, whereby different students god-mother_father each other. The first event they have planned for shall be announced by a “fire alarm” signalling the urgency of questioning institutional norms and its processes suppressing difference. It is the requisite initial event from which further unannounced events shall follow, sparking off exchange and conversations on the (existing) diversity within the student and teaching body. The aim is to make “alterity” a functioning principle that is conscious and present throughout institutional processes. In this way and along the events, the project shall grow and eventually spread to other departments of the school and be taken up by further student cohorts.

HEM Projects

The socio-cultural & socio-economic backgrounds of non-European students
Patrik Dasen and Soojin Lee conduct an ethnographic study that investigates the socio-cultural and socio-economic backgrounds of non-European students at the HEM-Genève. They are particularly interested in their musical trajectories and their lived experiences in Geneva. The study is based on semi-structured narrative interviews that focus on a broad range of issues such as the students’ family backgrounds, their current financial situation in Geneva or their relationship to the school’s and the Swiss federal administration (regarding visa issues ect). A preliminary analysis of these in-depth conversations complicates generalized notions about the assumed comfortable, upper-class status and the privileged position of international music students. While evaluating their everyday needs and intense institutional struggles in Switzerland, the researchers also aim at valorising the socio-cultural potential non-European students represent for the school. Further, interested in student-teacher interaction, they are also interviewing teaching staff. The data generated allows for the sensitisation and the opening up of critical debates among and between students, teachers and administrative staff, concerning the processes of discrimination at the heart of the institution.

Solfège – a universal language?
Victor Cordero, Bernardo Di Marco and Micha Seidenberg suggest that solfège (ear training), as it is currently understood and taught at Swiss music academies needs to be profoundly rethought. Contrary to popular notions about the universality of music theory, the theoretical premises of solfège are far from being universal. Rather, there is a variety of underestimated non-western pedagogic traditions that theorize musical processes in ways that have not made it into higher education. Based on qualitative interviews with students, professors, and executives and on the analysis of statistics by HEM-Genève, the group explores the structural exclusions of (mostly) non-European music students who were not socialized into the inherently Euro-American solfège tradition – hence who have not been trained to read or rewrite a score after hearing music. While solfège plays a decisive role in the admission process at Swiss music academies, its testing demands competences acquired prior to entering higher education. By assessing (universal) cognitive competences according to a regional tradition, music academies are prone to overlook much artistic potential. Given that HEM-Genève wishes to attract and integrate “international” students, thus students, whose cognitive ear training may differ from the way in which solfège has been constructed by Euro-American art schools, the conflicts emerge that are the object of this study.

ZHdK Projects

The notion of “good design” in higher design education
The project of Sarah Owens, Tingshan Cavelti and Allaina Venema interrogates the figure of the “good designer“ and the seemingly universal nature of “good design“ with its implicit claim to moral integrity. Starting from the BA course in Visual Communication at ZHdK, they ask how the “good designer“ is constructed within professional discourses and within the logic of tertiary education. A preliminary analysis of design journals and conversations with students shows that the most celebrated designers tend to be able-bodied, white men who represented as “design mavericks” or “design service providers”. In as much as these figures function as role models at German Swiss design schools, it needs to be asked how they shape and homogenize students’ professional identities, and to what extent their construction works to perpetuate the internationally recognized “Swiss style.”
The project thus aims at questioning and interrupting this seemingly natural, reproductive cycle. This will be done by examining curricula and teaching materials, and by instigating critical conversations among students and teachers over unspoken understandings of “good design” and related key terms such as “good taste,” “talent,“ or “creativity”. Finally, the norms constructed within admission procedures, presentation of final works, employment strategies, or criteria for course self-evaluation shall be discussed and, while always considering the school’s institutional framework, possibly modified.

Notions of one’s “own expression” in grammar school art education
Julia Kuster, Laura Ferrara, Lorenz Bachofner, and Nora Schiedt interrogate how grammar school art educators understand the phrase “own expression” (“eigener Ausdruck”) in art education, as well as related key terms such as individuality, autonomy, or authenticity. They are concerned with the in- and exclusions produced by these understandings. Based on their own experiences as former grammar pupils, as MA students of Art Education at ZhdK and as future grammar school art educators, the group sees itself positioned at an interface where aesthetic tastes, norms and values have been reproduced without thorough reflection.
Their preliminary analysis shows that finding one’s “own expression” amounts to more than a learning target. Inscribed in grammar school curricula, this phrase reflects ideas about artist originality that hail from the project of enlightenment. In practice, expression is equated with originality and contrasted with imitation, e.g. when teachers mention a pupil’s manga-style drawings as an example for lacking “own expression”. The group has been collecting, visualizing, and mapping thoughts, questions, pictures and teaching materials; this “mapping” serves as a guide for further interviews (at Kantonsschule Küsnacht) and is continually extended by the examples art educators contribute from their own teaching practice. Based on this mapping, the group envisions the production and dissemination of digital and analogue leaflets, are aimed at sensitizing art instructors at different institutions.

Inclusion und Exclusion through mentoring in artist education
Romy Rüegger and Yvonne Wilhelm are examining the mentoring format in the BA program in Art and Media and the MA in Fine Arts at ZHdK. Mentoring consists of a series of one-on-one conversations between teacher and student or, possibly, artist group: An experienced artist accompanies a prospective artist (group) in developing their practice and recommends references, work methods, decision-making tools ect. Inevitably, these conversations are shaped by differences in artistic socialization and professionalization that foster mutual preferences, discriminations, in- and exclusions. Given that mentoring has been a tool to sustain cultural differences, to perpetuate the existing canon and to reproduce exclusive and excluding relationships within the field of art, the project addresses the (potential) “bonds” and the power relations at the heart of the intimate mentoring situation.
Due to different personal and institutional positions, Romy Rüegger (as an assistant and BA tutor) and Yvonne Wilhelm (as a lecturer in the MA program) follow slightly different approaches. From the outset, they have been documenting their mentoring experiences and research strategies on a semi-public blog. Their sporadic exchange with mentored, co-researching students will be continued and the research results of mentors and students shared on a second, semi-public blog. Further, in spring 2016 a workshop on the mentoring format will be developed and offered; as an artistic outcome, performative presentations on artistic research are being contemplated.

All of you: Thanks for your amazing work!

Serena O. Dankwa.

Colloquium no. 5; Friday 3rd July 2015, 18.00 at HEAD – Genève

The assumption that everybody is physically and mentally fit, efficient and productive is so much at the heart of higher education that ableism is often times not considered when it comes to diversity. In preparing for its fifth and final colloquium, the Art.School.Differences team realized how central disability as a category of analysis is in understanding processes of inclusion and exclusion in the field of higher education.

Disability studies have deconstructed the assumed difference between able and disabled bodies by pointing out that we are all only temporarily abled-bodied: Sooner or later every-body will face physical or mental restrictions and depend on helping hands and devices. Nevertheless, ableism is easily overlooked in our outcome- and efficiency-oriented teaching and research practices. And, ableism is much more than the discrimination or social prejudice against people with visible or invisible impairments. It is based on the notion of an ideal bodily standard and the fundamental distinction from everything that deviates from this standard. In higher art education in particular, the assumption looms large that passion and dedication imply working 24/7 and being ready and able to ignore such basic needs as eating or sleeping. If the aim is to create an art school free of discrimination, we need to ask how the body is represented in and by art schools, and what ableism means for teaching, for learning and for our understanding of art and aesthetics in general.

Only very recently disability has been made part of diversity policies in art institutions. But as Sophie Vögele noted in her welcome address, while the diversity of institutions is measured by counting nationalities of students and addressed by organizing multicultural dinners, there are no serious measures taken so far to tackle ableism. This would imply that “institutions provide access to disabled students and teachers in order to allow them to pursue their studies and work, but it is also important to acknowledge disability as a potential for new or non-mainstream artistic expression.” A famous example for such new forms of expression is the British dance film by DV8 Physical Theatre and its principal character David Tool, a dancer without legs. https://www.youtube.com/watchv=QgUT0Ufmkbk&feature=youtu.be

In his introductory comments Xavier Bouvier, Head of Studies and Head of the Composition & Theory Department of the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève, addressed the challenge of creating more “equal, fair and non-normative“ art school curricula. In particular he focused on some of the keywords in the latestet version of the Bologna Declaration of Europe’s Ministry of Education. Among other the Bolgona reform, which has initiated fundamental changes  in order to create the “European Higher Education Area,“ aims at developing “competence based“ curricula. The term “competence“ refers to the applicability of knowledge, hence the student’s capacity to apply the knowledge acquired and be fit for the labour market. In this context of applicability and employ-ability, competence profiles are in danger of perpetuating a form of ableism which dis-ables certain students. Unless designers of competence profiles validate the (often creative) ways in which students with disabilities acquire and apply knowledge and consider their alternative skills and strategies as an asset, the logic of competence will not enhance the presence of such students with special needs.

In the art school context the question of who will be employable and which competences will matter most in the future is tricky, given that the market for performing artists has undergone and will continue to undergo enormous changes in the decades to come. Success measured within the normative model of being able to answer to a prior fixed market demand, may be less important than the ability to build new demands. Another point Bouvier singled out is Bologna’s ambitious goal to foster “intercultural understanding“ in order to “strengthen European and global citizenship and lay the foundations for inclusive societies.“ Especially in the context of “conservatoires“ that seek to conserve and transmit certain musical traditions, it is hard work to build up artistic understanding across cultures. Taking into account that music cultures are steeped in traditions that “frequently behave in normative ways much remains to be done.“

Sébastien Kessler the main speaker of the evening, describes himself as an activist. Kessler has an engineering degree in physics at the EPFL of Lausanne and a Master in Health Economics. Asked to represent the point of view of a person with a “handicap,” he got increasingly involved in adult education. Kessler co-founded a consultancy that specializes in universal access and has worked with Swiss hospitals, airports and universities.

Kessler took his personal experiences as starting point to his presentation. As July 3^rd was one of those dog days of summer, he started his presentation by addressing the way in which the heat affects wheel chair users. He did so by polemically instructing us, the non-wheel-chair-using audience, to add something to our curricula: “Stick your feet to the floor, the back to chair and don’t move for an hour. If you don’t manage you’ll get a bad mark.“ The lesson: We tend to be unaware that heat and sweat makes it harder to sit for long hours without getting soar; the ability to sit amounts to an unspoken (ableist) requirement of higher education.

Aimed at informing and educating, Kessler’s presentation highlighted a range of disabling practices, as well enabling strategies and self-representations of “handicapped” people. A North American “disability sensitive training” video he showed (see the link in the last slide of PPT Sébastien Kessler) was particularly impressive, if only because, both white people and people of colour spoke about their disabilities. By explaining how they liked to be interacted with, they account for the fact that it is not easy “to interact with people you are not accustomed to,” as Kessler put it. What goes unsaid of course, is that they are thereby taking on the burden of educating their fellow “non-disabled” people.

A critical aspect that came up when Kessler mentioned Switzerland’s recent vote in favour of embryo testing, was the question of happiness. While some disability organizations supported the new law, others questioned its eugenic premises and the implied link between dis/ability and un/happiness. Kessler suggested that economic privilege – which, as I would add, tends to be accompanied by racial privilege – plays a major role in whether or not an impaired person can live a comfortable, and supposedly happier life. Without further exploring the question of suffering and happiness, Kessler pointed out that a monthly allowance of 1500 CHF, the minimum Swiss disability pension, makes life challenging. He further indicated that his own mobility and visibility as an activist owes much to the fact that his parents had the means to send him to good schools. His social and cultural capital as a white male Swiss citizen helped in finding an internship and enter a job through the backdoor, in making strategic choices about his studies (public health) and becoming an entrepreneur in a sector (the private field of disability) in which, as he says, his visible impairment is an asset rather than a disability.

“Le freak, c’est chick!” the title picture to Kessler’s presentation is a still from the American horror film “Freaks” by Tod Browning.

Produced in 1932, its actors and actresses usually performed in carnival sideshow where they were to show case their physical “deformities.” According to Wikipedia, the original version of “Freaks” was considered to be too shocking and was destroyed. Today, people with disabilities figure in dogma films such as Lars von Trier’s “Breaking the waves “ or “Danger in the Dark” (see picture below). It would have to be examined not only how exactly they are portrayed, but also how they are positioned in terms of their racial, gender, and class affiliation.

“Disabled people are never represented as normal. They are either super intelligent or they are incorporated as the villain, they are represented as either inefficient or as highly talented.”[1] The later notion of being extraordinary, intersects with attempts to produce positive images, by portraying what, say, sportsmen in wheel chairs are capable of. Showing a video ad on disabled sports, Kessler mentions that he himself, regardless of his non-sportive looks, has been asked whether he plays Basketball. Ironically, as I would add, able-bodied young Black men get asked the same question; the connecting logic perhaps being: there are certain “other“ fields, such as sports or music, in which even non-normative bodies are credited for their successful performance.

Kessler himself did not focus on the ways in which different minoritized groups are interpellated by the same norms, or excluded in different or similar ways. Neither did he engage with the ways in which different marginalized groups are being played against each other, politically and in cultural representations. Rather, concerned with determining the needs of and providing universal access to people with a variety of physical and mental impairments, his key message was: “you are not disabled everyday, you are in a disabling position depending in your environment and what concepts you meet.“ This important message also transpires in his carefully put together powerpoint presentation PPT Sébastien Kessler.

[1] However, Kessler also reminded us of the adds that depicted happy children affected by trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) in the late 1980s, in which people with disabilities are portrayed as, at least potentially, “normal” consumers.

Serena O. Dankwa
is a classical musician who became a radio journalist who became a black feminist anthropologist
https://www.zhdk.ch/?person/detail&id=201721

Colloquium no. 4 Friday 24^th April 2015, 18.00 at ZHdK

Radical lectures delivered in less radical institutional settings tend to be opened by official welcome notes that are well-intended, but often boring or that even downplay the radical stance the lecture itself is about to propose. This was not the case on April 24^th, when David Keller, head of International Affairs at ZHdK, welcomed Melissa Steyn and Marie Buscatto in Zurich. In front of a full house, Keller opened the evening by acknowledging the ambivalence of his own position, as a “super privileged, white, heterosexual man from a middle-class background,” in the context of an programme that aims to destabilise the hegemony of that very position.

Having been involved with literacy projects in development cooperation in Latin America, Keller was particularly interested in Steyn’s concept of “critical diversity literacy.” Steyn argues that “those socialized into spaces of relative disadvantage tend to be more literate in critical diversity,” than those who are born into positions of privilege. Taking this statement at face value, Keller wondered if he was invited to attend the evening in order to improve his own “diversity literacy,” hence his own capacity to read and recognize processes of discrimination, by being exposed to an experience of multiple exclusion himself (as supposeldy one of the few straight white men in the lecture hall). While this remark might have sounded a bit heavier than intended, it does speak to the spectre haunting those who are indeed comfortably occupying privileged social positions.

Without justifying those who feel pressured, threatened or even “discriminated” against when confronted with the demands of a critical diversity agenda, Keller suggested that such (defensive) responses indicate that “something powerful is coming.” Further, he held that Paulo Freire’s major work “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” should be inverted and rewritten into a ”Pedagogy for the Oppressor“ who is ready to work on his ”failed socialization“ and be educated on the injustices he did not learn to see. Keller closed his opening remarks by welcoming Melissa Steyn as the “critical friend” needed to ask provocative questions and offer her critique.

Keller was followed by Carmen Mörsch, head of the institute for Art Education, who introduced the lecturers in more detail, after assuring Keller that Art.School.Differences project considers him an ally: Keller’s attempts at reflecting on ZHdK’s process of internationalization by discussing critical theories were, she said, highly appreciated by the Art.School.Differences team.

18.15h
Melissa Steyn (Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)
Getting into focus for the 21st Century: Critical Diversity Literacy as an essential lens

Melissa Steyn, best known for her work on whiteness in post-Apartheid South Africa, has been developing Diversity Studies as field in Higher Education since 2001. She holds the South African National Chair in Critical Diversity Studies and is the founding director of the Wits Center for Diversity Studies, which challenges ideas about difference through research and education.

Steyn understands diversity as a mode of “being different together” that is enabling for everybody. As simple as this may sound, in reality it’s complicated. Especially since diversity has become a core trope for the world and since claims to be in favour of diversity have become standard – not least in Higher Art Education. Steyn’s framework of “Critical Diversity Literacy“ accounts for the fact that achieving true diversity is a struggle that is far from being a carnivalesque celebration and consumption of differences, as neo-liberalism tries to make us believe. This critical type of literacy is much more than a private, cognitive skill to encode and decode written texts. Rather, this literacy connotes the socially and culturally embedded capacity of reading, or, drawing on France Winddance Twine, “of receiving and responding to a social climate and prevalent structures of oppression.” ^[1]

Steyn defines Critical Diversity Literacy (CDL) as “an informed analytical orientation that enables a person to ‘read’ prevailing social relations as one would a text, recognizing the ways in which possibilities are being opened up or closed down for those differently positioned within“ a specific social context. For years, Steyn has been working on and extending the criteria to assess (someone’s) CDL. I will focus on three of the ten critical points she outlined in Zurich:

1. an understanding of the role of power in the construction of differences that make a difference.
Point one gets at the heart of how the social is constructed. It conveys that unequal power dynamics are the medium through which differences become salient. We first need to detect the discourses that hold centres and margins in place and determine whose life opportunities are restricted and whose are enabled as a result. This can only be done by putting power at the centre of analysis.

2. recognition of the unequal symbolic and material values of different social locations. This includes acknowledging hegemonic positionalities and concomitant identities and how these position non-hegemonic others.
Dominant groups are the ones who possess the freedom to define which differences matter. The privileged have the power of define the oppressed populations as the others. While these others may also have internalized normative understanding of themselves (as an example Steyn mentions that “good Blacks“ in South Africa perform their blackness in a way that makes whites feel comfortable), they still tend to have a better more receptive understanding of how social dynamics of exclusion are operating.

9. understanding the role of emotions, including our own emotional investments, in all of the above
As affect theory has shown, the way we feel about others and about ourselves, our emotional responses are not inevitable or “natural”, but acquired. Through socialisation we learn who we are supposed to trust and feel close to, and who we are supposed to fear. CDL requires the willingness to explore of our sense of self and to recognise our privilege or complicity. However uncomfortable this process be, becoming aware of how we have been shaped emotionally is crucial to the process in letting go routinized responses and becoming critical diversity literates.

Last but not least, as Steyn emphasizes, point ten reminds us that critical diversity literacy implies not just the capacity to read but also the capacity to (re)write the script that lead to exclusions:
10.  an engagement with transformation of those oppressive systems towards deepening social justice at all levels.

While I have picked out four point that seem particularly relevant to myself, you should consult the powerpoint presentation in which Melissa Steyn names all the ten criteria she developed: Steyn_PowerPoint

Discussion:
Steyn’s insistence on a critical perspective reflects that un-critical diversity projects are part and parcel of neo-liberal agendas. The fact that diversity is a form of literacy that needs to be acquired (rather than consumed and celebrated), implies that it is crucial to focus on power dynamics. Steyn understands diversity as struggle against existing power blocks that need to be changed. Asked about the strategies of survival of those who try to enact critical diversity literacy, Steyn pointed out that it is important of being aware of how draining and “dangerous” this work can be. Comparing the Swiss situation of diversity and its study to the South African engagement with diversity, Steyn holds that it is in fact harder to persuade the “centers” (like Switzerland) to shift. In South Africa discussions concerning the need for critical diversity are held less politely and with an urgency that is perhaps necessary to make changes.

19.15
Marie Buscatto (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne)
Art worlds as gendered worlds

Marie Buscatto is well-known for her empirical work on “artistic practices as gendered practices.” An amateur jazz musician herself, she has used both ethnographic and classical sociological methods in exploring the role of female artists in the world of jazz in particular. In her presentation at ZHdK she set out to explain why men in arts “always fare better than women in terms of becoming and remaining recognized as artists,” and why, nevertheless, increasing numbers of female artists are being successful. With regard to her binary use of gender categories (“woman” / “man”), Buscatto sent ahead that she considered “transsexuals” a recent and relatively marginal phenomenon that she did not consider in her study.

Despite the public perception about the open-minded of the art world, it is highly gendered in ways that leads to the marginalisation of female performers over time. Here’s a summary of the main points of this gradual, cumulative process:
1. as in other professional fields, female performers are overrepresented in devaluated, feminine connoted areas such as dancing and singing. In jazz this imbalance is striking – 96% of all instrumentalists are male and 65% of all singers are female – and reflects how the gendered order is naturalized in music from an early age. Boys, for instance, may be encouraged to pick up an electric guitar and allowed to explore informal (musical) environments, whereas girls are rather called into learning formal, classical instruments.
2. socializing works better for male than for female performers. Buscatto mentions that it is difficult to feel comfortable as a woman in an otherwise all male band, because the men “don’t feel comfortable with you either.” To the men feels safer to play (music) with colleagues of your own gender, and, as I would add your own race.
3. persistent stereotype about women not being powerful creators, complicates recognition as an independent female artist. When female pop musicians do become famous, it’s assumed that someone else writes their hits for them, that they are backed by powerful boyfriends, or that it is their (physical) seductiveness that makes them successful. Male seduction, however, is associated with action and creativity.
4. women struggle to articulate private and professional life not because they have children, but rather, because unlike their male who are backed by a helpful girlfriend, heterosexual female artists tend to have lovers who are themselves busy artists and less prepared to cater to their partner’s career and professional needs.

Nevertheless, a number of factors have contributed to the raising numbers in women in art, since female artists are strategically:
1. turning feminine stereotypes into an asset; women artists in particularly “feminine” and devaluated fields (such as knitting) managed to revert stigma and end up being considered original.
2. consciously or unconsciously deploying “feminine capital such as seduction” as a marketing strategy, while remaining aware that drawing on certain stereotypes is counterproductive, because it makes you a “feminine artists” and not a universal artist.
3. “compensating” exclusions by drawing on formal funding programmes and/or on their class privileges. Generally, female musicians are equipped with more cultural capital and have better access to (male) social networks.
– they tend to have higher educational degrees than men; art schools are efficient in allowing young women to practice networking and performance skills that are hard to gain in stigmatizing, informal spaces.
– public funding and projects for underprivileged youth in popular music and dance seem to have a positive effect for women.
– it has been shown that the use of screens to hire orchestra musicians has elevated the percentage of female orchestra musicians by 30%.
4. involving themselves in collective action and commercial and/or feminist initiatives organized for (or by) all-female bands and groups of artists.

Discussion:
While appreciating Buscatto’s empirical findings, her neglect of intersectional and historical works by black and queer theorists was critiqued. First, her pre-empting comment about trans*issues being a recent phenomena was interrogated on the basis that gender-queers (people transgressing gender binaries in various in/visible ways) have existed long before the term trans* gained currency. The risk of reproducing certain stereotypes (e.g. about women’s use of seduction) looms large, when gender binaries are taken for granted. This leads to an epistemological blind spot, for instance on the structuring effects of what queer theorists identified as “male homosociality”  or on what disables or allows for the reversal of certain stigmatizations and not others. Further, it would be interesting to consider contemporary female performers who reject to play on their femininity (by wearing baggy clothes ect) against the background of a long history of female musicians who cross-dressed and/or passed as men in performance spaces. This “queering” of the gaze does not mean we look for “homosexuals.” It compels us, however, to consider strategies of seduction or of non-seduction by making use of interdisciplinary theories on the intertwinement of gender and sexuality.

The discussion continued the following day in the colloquium among the professors and co-researchers during the Art.School.Differences colloquium. It illuminated the challenge of communicating across disciplines and the need to connect sociological research tools to cultural theories in order to understand the many faces of exclusion.

^[1] France Winddance Twine refers to reading practices in the context of what she coined as “racial literacy.”

Serena O. Dankwa
is a classical musician who became a radio journalist who became a black feminist anthropologist
https://www.zhdk.ch/?person/detail&id=201721

Colloquium no. 4

Friday 24^th April, 18.00 at ZHdK

Radical lectures delivered in less radical institutional settings tend to be opened by official welcome notes that are well-intended, but often boring or that even downplay the radical stance the lecture itself is about to propose. This was not the case on April 24^th, when David Keller, head of International Affairs at ZHdK, welcomed Melissa Steyn and Marie Buscatto in Zurich. In front of a full house, Keller opened the evening by acknowledging the ambivalence of his own position, as a “super privileged, white, heterosexual man from a middle-class background,” in the context of an programme that aims to destabilise the hegemony of that very position.

Having been involved with literacy projects in development cooperation in Latin America, Keller was particularly interested in Steyn’s concept of “critical diversity literacy.” Steyn argues that “those socialized into spaces of relative disadvantage tend to be more literate in critical diversity,” than those who are born into positions of privilege. Taking this statement at face value, Keller wondered if he was invited to attend the evening in order to improve his own “diversity literacy,” hence his own capacity to read and recognize processes of discrimination, by being exposed to an experience of multiple exclusion himself (as supposeldy one of the few straight white men in the lecture hall). While this remark might have sounded a bit heavier than intended, it does speak to the spectre haunting those who are indeed comfortably occupying privileged social positions.

Without justifying those who feel pressured, threatened or even “discriminated” against when confronted with the demands of a critical diversity agenda, Keller suggested that such (defensive) responses indicate that “something powerful is coming.” Further, he held that Paulo Freire’s major work “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” should be inverted and rewritten into a ”Pedagogy for the Oppressor“ who is ready to work on his ”failed socialization“ and be educated on the injustices he did not learn to see. Keller closed his opening remarks by welcoming Melissa Steyn as the “critical friend” needed to ask provocative questions and offer her critique.

Keller was followed by Carmen Mörsch, head of the institute for Art Education, who introduced the lecturers in more detail, after assuring Keller that Art.School.Differences project considers him an ally: Keller’s attempts at reflecting on ZHdK’s process of internationalization by discussing critical theories were, she said, highly appreciated by the Art.School.Differences team.

18.15h
Melissa Steyn (Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)
Getting into focus for the 21st Century: Critical Diversity Literacy as an essential lens

Melissa Steyn, best known for her work on whiteness in post-Apartheid South Africa, has been developing Diversity Studies as field in Higher Education since 2001. She holds the South African National Chair in Critical Diversity Studies and is the founding director of the Wits Center for Diversity Studies, which challenges ideas about difference through research and education.

Steyn understands diversity as a mode of “being different together” that is enabling for everybody. As simple as this may sound, in reality it’s complicated. Especially since diversity has become a core trope for the world and since claims to be in favour of diversity have become standard – not least in Higher Art Education. Steyn’s framework of “Critical Diversity Literacy“ accounts for the fact that achieving true diversity is a struggle that is far from being a carnivalesque celebration and consumption of differences, as neo-liberalism tries to make us believe. This critical type of literacy is much more than a private, cognitive skill to encode and decode written texts. Rather, this literacy connotes the socially and culturally embedded capacity of reading, or, drawing on France Winddance Twine, “of receiving and responding to a social climate and prevalent structures of oppression.” ^[1]

Steyn defines Critical Diversity Literacy (CDL) as “an informed analytical orientation that enables a person to ‘read’ prevailing social relations as one would a text, recognizing the ways in which possibilities are being opened up or closed down for those differently positioned within“ a specific social context. For years, Steyn has been working on and extending the criteria to assess (someone’s) CDL. I will focus on three of the ten critical points she outlined in Zurich:

1. an understanding of the role of power in the construction of differences that make a difference.
Point one gets at the heart of how the social is constructed. It conveys that unequal power dynamics are the medium through which differences become salient. We first need to detect the discourses that hold centres and margins in place and determine whose life opportunities are restricted and whose are enabled as a result. This can only be done by putting power at the centre of analysis.

2. recognition of the unequal symbolic and material values of different social locations. This includes acknowledging hegemonic positionalities and concomitant identities and how these position non-hegemonic others.
Dominant groups are the ones who possess the freedom to define which differences matter. The privileged have the power of define the oppressed populations as the others. While these others may also have internalized normative understanding of themselves (as an example Steyn mentions that “good Blacks“ in South Africa perform their blackness in a way that makes whites feel comfortable), they still tend to have a better more receptive understanding of how social dynamics of exclusion are operating.

9. understanding the role of emotions, including our own emotional investments, in all of the above
As affect theory has shown, the way we feel about others and about ourselves, our emotional responses are not inevitable or “natural”, but acquired. Through socialisation we learn who we are supposed to trust and feel close to, and who we are supposed to fear. CDL requires the willingness to explore of our sense of self and to recognise our privilege or complicity. However uncomfortable this process be, becoming aware of how we have been shaped emotionally is crucial to the process in letting go routinized responses and becoming critical diversity literates.

Last but not least, as Steyn emphasizes, point ten reminds us that critical diversity literacy implies not just the capacity to read but also the capacity to (re)write the script that lead to exclusions:
10.  an engagement with transformation of those oppressive systems towards deepening social justice at all levels.

While I have picked out four point that seem particularly relevant to myself, you should consult the powerpoint presentation in which Melissa Steyn names all the ten criteria she developed: Steyn_PowerPoint

Discussion:
Steyn’s insistence on a critical perspective reflect that un-critical diversity projects are part and parcel of neo-liberal agendas. The fact that diversity is a form of literacy that needs to be acquired (rather than consumed and celebrated), implies that it is crucial to focus on power dynamics. Steyn understands diversity as struggle against existing power blocks that need to be changed. Asked about the strategies of survival of those who try to enact critical diversity literacy, Steyn pointed out that it is important of being aware of how draining and “dangerous” this work can be on all levels. Comparing the Swiss situation of diversity and its study to South African engagement with diversity, Steyn holds that it is in fact harder to persuade the “centers” (like Switzerland) to shift. In South Africa discussions concerning the need for critical diversity are held less politely and with more urgency that is perhaps necessary to make changes.

19.15
Marie Buscatto (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne)
Art worlds as gendered worlds

Marie Buscatto is well-known for her empirical work on “artistic practices as gendered practices.” An amateur jazz musician herself, she has used both ethnographic and classical sociological methods in exploring the role of female artists in the world of jazz in particular. In her presentation at ZHdK she set out to explain why men in arts “always fare better than women in terms of becoming and remaining recognized as artists,” and why, nevertheless, increasing numbers of female artists are being successful. With regard to her binary use of gender categories (“woman” / “man”), Buscatto sent ahead that she considered “transsexuals” a recent and relatively marginal phenomenon that she did not consider in her study.

Despite the public perception about the open-minded of the art world, it is highly gendered in ways that leads to the marginalisation of female performers over time. Here’s a summary of the main points of this gradual, cumulative process:
1. as in other professional fields, female performers are overrepresented in devaluated, feminine connoted areas such as dancing and singing. In jazz this imbalance is striking – 96% of all instrumentalists are male and 65% of all singers are female – and reflects how the gendered order is naturalized in music from an early age. Boys, for instance, may be encouraged to pick up an electric guitar and allowed to explore informal (musical) environments, whereas girls are rather called into learning formal, classical instruments.
2. socializing works better for male than for female performers. Buscatto mentions that it is difficult to feel comfortable as a woman in an otherwise all male band, because the men “don’t feel comfortable with you either.” To the men feels safer to play (music) with colleagues of your own gender, and, as I would add your own race.
3. persistent stereotype about women not being powerful creators, complicates recognition as an independent female artist. When female pop musicians do become famous, it’s assumed that someone else writes their hits for them, that they are backed by powerful boyfriends, or that it is their (physical) seductiveness that makes them successful. Male seduction, however, is associated with action and creativity.
4. women struggle to articulate private and professional life not because they have children, but rather, because unlike their male who are backed by a helpful girlfriend, heterosexual female artists tend to have lovers who are themselves busy artists and less prepared to cater to their partner’s career and professional needs.

Nevertheless, a number of factors have contributed to the raising numbers in women in art, since female artists are strategically:
1. turning feminine stereotypes into an asset; women artists in particularly “feminine” and devaluated fields (such as knitting) managed to revert stigma and end up being considered original.
2. consciously or unconsciously deploying “feminine capital such as seduction” as a marketing strategy, while remaining aware that drawing on certain stereotypes is counterproductive, because it makes you a “feminine artists” and not a universal artist.
3. “compensating” exclusions by drawing on formal funding programmes and/or on their class privileges. Generally, female musicians are equipped with more cultural capital and have better access to (male) social networks.
– they tend to have higher educational degrees than men; art schools are efficient in allowing young women to practice networking and performance skills that are hard to gain in stigmatizing, informal spaces.
– public funding and projects for underprivileged youth in popular music and dance seem to have a positive effect for women.
– it has been shown that the use of screens to hire orchestra musicians has elevated the percentage of female orchestra musicians by 30%.
4. involving themselves in collective action and commercial and/or feminist initiatives organized for (or by) all-female bands and groups of artists.

Discussion:
While appreciating Buscatto’s empirical findings, her neglect of intersectional and historical works by black and queer theorists was critiqued. First, her pre-empting comment about trans*issues being a recent phenomena was interrogated on the basis that gender-queers (people transgressing gender binaries in various in/visible ways) have existed long before the term trans* gained currency. The risk of reproducing certain stereotypes (e.g. about women’s use of seduction) looms large, when gender binaries are taken for granted. This leads to an epistemological blind spot, for instance on the structuring effects of what queer theorists identified as “male homosociality”  or on what disables or allows for the reversal of certain stigmatizations and not others. Further, it would be interesting to consider contemporary female performers who reject to play on their femininity (by wearing baggy clothes ect) against the background of a long history of female musicians who cross-dressed and/or passed as men in performance spaces. This “queering” of the gaze does not mean we look for “homosexuals.” It compels us, however, to consider strategies of seduction or of non-seduction by making use of interdisciplinary theories on the intertwinement of gender and sexuality.

The discussion continued the following day in the colloquium among the professors and co-researchers during the Art.School.Differences colloquium. It illuminated the challenge of communicating across disciplines and the need to connect sociological research tools to cultural theories in order to understand the many faces of exclusion.

^[1] France Winddance Twine refers to reading practices in the context of what she coined as “racial literacy.”

Serena O. Dankwa
is a classical musician who became a radio journalist who became a black feminist anthropologist
https://www.zhdk.ch/?person/detail&id=201721

18.03.2015, ZHdK:

Hopes and Fears for Art: Policy and Practice in Widening Participation in Art and Design Higher Education in the UK

Jackie McManus (University of the Arts, London)

Jackie McManus’ evening lecture drew on one of the core references for Art.School.Differences: The study “Art for a Few: Exclusion and Misrecognition in Higher Art and Design Education” by Penny Jane Burke and Jackie McManus (2009). This study evaluated the British government initiative “Widening Participation” (WP) a ongoing programme that has redressed the under-representation of certain social groups in higher education since the late 1990s. While WP has become a key policy discourse (in the UK and internationally), McManus reminded us that the objective of diversifying the student body is still largely driven by economic and utilitarian aims of creating a better-educated workforce. WP’s neo-liberal motivations are paralleled and underpinned by the increasing marketization of higher education: degrees in art and design subjects are no longer eligible for government subsidy, and the reality is that that is restricting, rather than widening participation.

McManus’s presentation illuminated the insidious ways in which exclusion still operates by focusing on the admissions procedures she observed at five British art schools. In particular she examined the case of a black working-class woman, on whose admissions interview she sat in. The interview with the young woman, who was applying for a fashion design BA, was cut short after said she was influenced by hip hop and interested in designing sports tops. Before the interview took place, the interviewers had not deemed her portfolio weak. But after the interview they agreed they would say her portfolio was weak as the reason for rejecting her. In her assessment form the tutors made notes about the “unfashionable clothes” she was wearing. Moreover, the fact that the candidate intended to live with her parents while studying was read as a sign of immaturity. The “expensively dressed” English-white middle-class male candidate interviewed immediately afterwards, who intended to leave home (“because it’s all part of the experience”), and “cited famous contemporary artists”, but had “considerably poorer qualifications,” was offered a place.

Admission practices are tied up with complex operations of exclusion that privilege the habitus and “the cultural and linguistic capital of ’traditional’ students, who tend to come from white, middle-class backgrounds.” McManus’ findings confirm the observations the Art.School.Differences team made within the admissions procedures at Swiss art schools: In McManus’ words, admissions judgments tend to be “shaped by implicit, institutionalized, disciplinary and racialised perspectives of what counts as legitimate forms of experience and knowledge.” It is thus not enough to work at rendering admissions processes more “transparent;” transparency alone does not make them more “fair.” Fairness implies teaching those with the supposedly “wrong” influences and backgrounds, how to access and decipher admissions information, how to decode unspoken institutional assumptions and how to develop their own (admissions) strategies and portfolios. Often, however, art educators who work with working-class and “Black and ethnic minority” youth focus on vocational techniques (such as making handbags or printing T-shirts) rather than on imparting the discursive skills and strategies it takes to access and persist in the field of higher art education themselves.

Colloquium no. 3: Friday 27^th February 2015, 18.00 at HEAD-Genève

“Exception is a comfortable situation, allowing elasticity and singularity in our daily work, in our daily institutional management and in our world view.” Lysianne Léchot, dean of Studies at Geneva University of Art and Design was clear in her welcome address: notions of exceptionalism are at the heart of art school and need to be rethought. “Exception can be precious when it comes to art and design: aesthetic beauties and intellectual strength are, in the very best examples, exceptional,” Léchot continued. “But exception can also be a pitfall. Especially in a public educational institution. When schools reproduce social, ethnic or gender inequalities in their daily work, in their daily management and in their world view, they should be criticised, and transformed, so as to match the democratic ambition of equal opportunity for all.”

If notions of being exceptional and therefore somehow outside or above society allow art schools to measure things with a different yardsticks and to be less transparent and less accountable, institutionalized exceptionalism is indeed a pitfall. Such art school exceptionalism undermines broader attempts to dismantle structural discrimination in tertiary education. As I see it, it inhibits the frequently invoked quest for “diversity” – the discovery of supposedly unexpected talent that can innovatively undermine the normative. Who determines who is, objectively speaking, exceptional and talented enough to be admitted into higher art education? How ‘objective’ are the supposedly objective selection criteria, when notions of who has “potential” and what potential looks like, tend to be inherently classed and racialized? What criteria can we establish to ensure that “the chosen few“ entering and completing art school come from a range of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds?

Some of these questions were discussed in the afternoon session preceding the public evening lecture evening (opened by Lysianne Léchot). The seven co-research groups, consisting of students and teachers from ZHdK, HEAD and HEM, discussed a preliminary booklet of recommendations on how to foster equality and plurality at art schools which has been compiled by Art.School.Differences. These recommendations set out the areas of conflict within the admissions process at the three schools. Among other things, they indicate the proportion of Swiss art students from migrant backgrounds, so-called ‘secondas’ and ‘secondos’, and highlight that, although gender considerations have been integrated into the admission process, they revolve around binary, hetero-normative understandings of gender; and thus ideas about the masculine or feminine characteristics of an applicant are made, without consideration of gender-queer or non-normative femininities. The recommendations also include concrete tools and criteria with which to further reflect on and make more transparent the processes of admission. The co-researchers especially welcomed the recommendation that all candidates, not least the rejected ones, should be given a feedback – even if they do not dare to ask for it. Institutional feedback would turn the admissions process into a learning experience, which is valuable especially to those who could not afford to attend foundation courses (propadeutika).

Public Lecture 1: Gender discrimination in French Art schools

Fabienne Dumont, École Européenne Supérieure d’Art de Bretagne EESAB, Quimper

The first evening lecture by Fabienne Dumont, art historian, art critique, and professor for contemporary art at the “école européenne supérieure d’art de Bretagne“ focused on the marginalization of women in art schools by comparing the under-representation of women in the French art world of the 1970s and of today. She analysed gender inequality in the 1970s by looking at the small percentage of women artists represented in art exhibitions, museums and magazines. She blamed the lack of female professors and directors at Art French schools for female art students‘ internalization of limitations. Nowadays, 60% of all art students in France and a third of all art school teachers and directors are female, and the percentage of women artists in exhibitions and at biennales in France has risen to 30%. However, the fact that the number has stagnated indicates that the glass ceiling is still intact.

Speaking of her work at an art school in a marginal region of France, where many students have a limited educational background and few of them go on to pursue professional artistic careers, Dumont suggested that the curriculum should be less narrowly oriented towards the contemporary art world. More open interactive educational formats need to be integrated, without, however, privileging the attendance of male students, who are still treated as the sole future breadwinners. Dumont doubted that the charter against discrimination, currently being developed at French Art schools (mostly in response to increasing numbers of students claims of sexism and sexual harassment), will bring much change. Given that a similar policy is already in place, Dumont proposed that anti-discriminatory laws should be accompanied by the creation of “listening spaces,” which include teaching staff and administrators. The fact that female students do not receive the best marks and are less encouraged to pursue careers as professional artists, could be rectified by augmenting the numbers of female art teachers to at least 40%. “Because even if these women are not feminists, the perception of the possibility of being female artist would become more widespread amongst students.” Dumont references the “Feminist Art Program” a collective of female art students and teachers in California who rejected the idea of male genius and worked towards developing artistic criteria that legitimated “practices related to the experiences of women.” In conclusion, however, Dumont held that these women-only initiatives have lost their appeal and cannot be replicated today, but that “we obviously need programs that teach gender, postcolonial or class in the curriculum, to legitimize aspirations for greater social justice.”

GenderDiscriminationInFrenchArtSchools_FabienneDumont (Power Point Presentation)

Discussion: As Dumont did not focus much on the practical implementation of her suggestions, for example, the idea of creating a “listening space,” she was asked to explain how exactly spaces of reflection could be fostered within today’s art schools. Dumont’s personal teaching practice of forming small groups of students interested in questions of gendered inequality and empowering them by broadening their horizon, did not seem to yield the basis for a broader conversation about how to foster critical discussions on norms and inequalities across schools. Dumont’s main suggestion of fighting gender discrimination by raising the number of “women” art professors was critiqued on the grounds that it reifies “women” as a seemingly static category, and did not account for intersecting categories such as race or class. Even if “counting men and women” seemed to be the easiest way to address the complexities of gender imbalances, such an approach was problematic if it reproduced a binary construction of gender and stabilized the unmarked position of white women. Rather than reifying a male-female division and thus rendering invisible non-normative gender identifications, it might be more fruitful, discussants argued, to raise the number of teachers who inhabit a variety of “minoritized positions.”

Public Lecture 2: Decolonising Art and Education through Creative Practice

Evan Ifekoya & Rudy Loewe, interdisciplinary visual and performance artists, London

The twin-presentations by Evan Ifekoya and Rudy Loewe focused on their individual work and facilitation practices as artist-activists in London, exploring anti-racist and anti-sexist methodologies by “utilising archives, contemporary culture and lived experience.” Both Ifekoya and Loewe identify as non-binary persons and prefer the gender-neutral pronoun “they” (hence also: their, them) in lieu of he or she. Both are committed to working with and making visible the (archived) works of people of colour. And both are generous in sharing their projects and ideas online, even if “this might not be a good business plan.” They like the idea of being a resource to all – while being aware, however, that the internet is not accessible to everyone either.

Evan Ifekoya’s aim of decolonising artistic practice began with re-naming themselves: Rather than using the British surname of their Nigerian father, Evan took on their mother’s maiden name Ifekoya, a name that existed prior to the insertion of British names and colonial naming practices in West Africa.

Ifekoya is part of QTIPOC, a London-based group of Queer, Trans* and Intersex People Of Colour. QTIPOC meets on a monthly basis to foster collective forms of creativity and make visible the works and histories QTIPOC. http://qtipoccollectivecreativity.tumblr.com Their homepage says: “As a collective of QTPOC artists who have all in some way felt failed by the art academy and our formal educations, this project offers up a space to critically reflect on those experiences and examine the gaps and absences in art institutions.“

Ifekoya teaches art to children who have been excluded from “normal” schools. She also takes working-class youth and children into art galleries and museums. In a school workshop taught at the Tate Modern in 2013, Ifekoya made their own body into an art project. Incited by one of the pupils who questioned Ifekoya’s sex/gender identity, Ifekoya invited all pupils to ask the visitors of the Tate, to comment on Ifekoya’s body and identity.  The responses were written on stickers and posted on Ifekoya’s body. The process amounted to a way of learning about the relativeness of categorization, while also putting at center-stage a black, gender-queer body within a colonial museum space. (The Tate was built on money gained during the transatlantic slave trade.)

“Artfunshack” Ifekoya’s colourful, weekly online art show, draws on pop culture images and uses tropes of childhood such as the legendary U.S. TV program “Sesame Street” to address, in particular, children of colour. In one video, for instance, they are making bounty balls, in reference to the Bounty Bar – a popular chocolate bar in the U.K. which consists of coconut covered in chocolate. A ‘bounty bar‘ or ‘coconut‘ is also a derogatory term for a person of colour who does not conform to internalised stereotypical ideas about how a person of African or Asian decent is supposed to behave, and is thus criticised for being “white on the inside and brown on the outside,” Ifekoya’s “compulsory visibility” as black and gender-queer body, emerges as an important starting point for their playful work around questions of identity and authenticity and their search for utopian spaces.

Rudy Loewe is a visual artist, educator and storyteller who works primarily in comic and zine format. Lead by an autobiographical focus, Loewe addresses issues concerning gender, race, sexuality, trauma, and mental health.

Loewe’s prints and comics speak about “bad therapy” and about trying to access mental health services in London. They represent traumatic experiences of domestic violence and abuse through a child’s eyes , and they evoke sudden falls and accidents as pivotal moments in our lives. The latter comic, on “free falling,” explores the tension between being in a constant state of flux and fall, while having to be tough and compelled to compartmentalize psychological things in order to survive economically and emotionally. Loewe’s take on “free falling” ties in with an interest in how everyday uncertainties and physical trauma are passed down to us generation for generation, from mothers to daughters. Loewe’s focus on the impact of (mental) health issues on the lives of people of colour draws attention to the bodily impact of structural discrimination.

Trying to escape the black-white logic, Loewe “brown washes” their work. Instead of working in black and white, Loewe uses brown paper and brown colours, in order to make brown people central to their stories. As educator and facilitator, Loewe often works in public libraries with working class black and brown kids. Loewe seeks to cultivate a space in which children, who may not consider their experiences important, begin to explore their own narratives. Conversations that touch on gendered and bodily experiences are part of these sessions. While queerness and sexuality is only addressed indirectly, many conversations with black boys revolve around being “stopped and searched” by the police.

Finally, Loewe talks about their interest in making archives accessible. Loewe was commissioned to make a comic on the late black modernist artist Claude McKay, a radical queer socialist who had some fame in the 1920s but was then largely forgotten again. By highlighting and reinvigorating different parts of McKay’s subjectivity, Loewe seeks to work against the marginalization of black artists and muses who “disappear” again, as they do not seem to be part of a larger tradition or not known to young artists of colour.

Discussion: Though Loewe and Ifekoya work mostly with kids and youth outside higher art schools, their intersectional practices could be considered a response to Dumont’s paper. While Dumont’s quest to contest gender discrimination at art schools, centers around the figure of the “woman” professor, in Loewe’s and Ifekoya’s teaching practice, gender is inextricably intertwined with conversations about race and sexuality. These issues are brought into conversations by using their own bodies to interrupt ideas of what constitutes the sexual and gender identity of a black/racialized person and by prompting pupils and arts teachers to rethink preconceived notions of masculinity and femininity.

The question, however, arises to what extent they can protect themselves from the unwanted attention their openness might trigger. Making their bodies and their traumatic experiences the site for instigating conversations on mental health and on what it means “be othered,” requires certain measures of self-protection. Their work implies a weaving in and out of art, academia and community spaces and requires a constant contending with the position of being simultaneously an insider and an outsider.

Saturday February 27th, 9.00 at HEAD:

Public Displays of Accountability: Addressing Race in the Arts / Curriculum

Workshop by Evan Ifekoya and Rudy Loewe

The workshop elaborated on the issues Rudy Loewe and Evan Ifekoya raised in their lecture the previous evening. Besides presenting contemporary arts projects that challenge institutional frameworks (the links to these projects are listed in the PowerPoint presentation), the focus was on practical tools for addressing race and racism and on decolonizing art school teaching practices. Drawing on African-American feminist scholars and activists bell hooks and Audre Lorde, Loewe and Ifekoya advocated “the dismantling of the master house” in the art school curriculum, and hence the undermining of the “whiteness and hetero-patriarchy” of the curriculum. This implies not only engaging black teachers and professors, but teaching the writings of postcolonial scholars as part and parcel of the art school curriculum.

In terms of developing a radical pedagogy, Loewe and Ifekoya themselves have been inspired by texts such as Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and bell hooks’ books “Teaching Community: A Pedgagy of Hope” and “Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom.” hooks thinks through “how we are as bodies” in the learning/teaching environment and focuses specifically on the ways in which we navigate the spaces we enter as learner and/or and facilitators.

The core theme of the session was accountability. “By accountability we are referring to the process by which actions and language can be questioned in a non confrontational way.” While the workshop participants did not raise any issues that might need to be addressed, Loewe and Ifekoya tested our capacity to have non-confrontational conversations by speaking about their unease upon entering the HEAD and being confronted with two posters that offended them. One of the posters advertised an art exhibition entitled Utopia/Ethiopia. Yet, none of the artists listed seemed to be of Ethiopian background or to work on Ethiopian art. Rather the poster featured a grey-haired white man, thus reproducing the white male gaze that tends to “other” subject positions such as the ones inhabited by Ifekoya or Loewe. The other poster, in black and white, featured the sentence “JE SUIS CHARLIE.” Although a comic artist herself, Loewe could not identify with the practices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. In fact Loewe felt hurt by the magazine’s “very violent, racist, sexist and islamophobic content” contributed to “violence against people of colour on the street.” Loewe’s and Ifekoya’s statements triggered a discussion about the degree to which it is possible to critique the position of Charlie Hebdo subsequent to the attacks in Paris within the context of a Swiss French art school. It was observed that counter-discourses and positionings, such as “Je suis Ahmed” (Ahmed, was one of the policemen killed in the event) had only little exposure at the HEAD and appeared to be almost unspeakable.

In the final section participants were invited to give a visual response to the session by producing their own zine, addressing the question: What would an accountability process look like?

PublicDisplaysOfAccountability_Loewe_Ifekoya (Power Point Presentation)

By Serena O. Dankwa

Work in progress: Co-research projects of Art.School.Differences at the 3^rd colloquium

The Saturday afternoon of this 3^rd colloquium was fully dedicated to the seven Art.School.Differences co-research projects. Carmen Mörsch, who supervised the working session, emphasized a joint, collective and friendly, but critical questioning by the audience of each group’s presentation of their work in progress. This, on one hand, to give space to the potential arising out of the multitude of different experiences, disciplinary and working perspectives present at the colloquium, as well as, on the other, to allow questions and uncertainties of each research-group to emerge and to be addressed.

The group from Art Education at ZHdK led by Lorenz Bachofner, Laura Ferrara, Julia Kuster and Nora Schiedt focuses on the important, but contradictory role of «one’s own artistic / creative expression» in (higher) art education. On one hand, this idea is strongly related to problematic notions of talent or the genius (as well as the creatio ex nihilo). On the other, it reflects the widespread conviction that the artistic expression can be taught and learned in school. Drawing on their experience at the ZHdK, they explain that this claim was and still is not met within their own education, and go on arguing that the concept of the ‹singularity› tends to be a «Leerformel» in the sense of Ernst Topitsch. Furthermore, their research project mirrors their personal interest to break the «circle of reproduction» as they themselves are coming from high school and returning there after their studies as teachers. Methodologically, they aim at looking at the curricula («Lehrpläne») of three different high schools in the canton of Zurich and to conduct in-depth interviews with teachers while the latter are assessing their pupils’ artistic works. Possible research questions are the following: What effects do these curricula have on the individual teachers? How do teachers deal with it in their classes? How do they value work? And how do they speak about a student’s work while assessing it?

The research group from Fine Arts at ZHdK led by Romy Rüegger and Yvonne Wilhelm is interested in the question of what happens during the mentoring of a student by a teacher. These mentoring situations are of overall importance within fine arts education as working processes are individualized and have to be adapted to the interaction between teachers and students. Although this format opens up spaces for transgression and bears the overcoming of gridlocked structures inherent to teaching, it entails important moments of normativity as well as inclusion and exclusion. The research wants to address these by questioning the importance given to certain artistic values or references and canons. It also inquires the perspectives and positions taken on by speakers and how they reflect privileges. They started to collect and document research materials on an internal blog with students. To be able to overcome the challenge of their institutional positions as teachers, Romy Rüegger and Yvonne Wilhelm chose to stage a mentoring situation with students from the MA Fine Arts and from BA Kunst & Medien program and alumni at ZHdK (Onur Akyol, Martina Baldinger, Angelo Brem, Berivan Güngör, Bleta Jahaj, Patrick Kull, Rina von Burg). Some of them will take on the respective role as students and teachers while being observed by the others. Their experience and observations will be compared to the ones by the teachers themselves. The goal is to think of and establish other kinds of mentoring formats without them having to be new. While presenting their project, Romy Rüegger and Yvonne Wilhelm recalled the students group to first have been surprised about the idea of questioning the mentoring process. This suggests a strong expectation from the students that their mentors should define this situation instead of themselves. The example very well illustrates how the hierarchy of the teacher – student at art school is internalized and is reinforced in every day practice of teaching and learning.

Sarah Owen with Tingshan Cavelti and Allaina Venema from the design department at ZHdK, are researching the representations of the «ideal designer» in the educational system as well as «on the market»: Preferred are white, male, heterosexual and preferably Swiss, if not then Dutch or British subjectivities. Although abstract criteria are set up during the admission process, ideal types of designers are very prevalent. Among others, there is the maverick («Abenteurer»), lonesome wolf type, opposed to the bureaucratic designer («Gestaltungsbürokrat») type. Although both constructed ideal types differ in their narrative as well as visual representation, they nevertheless have something in common, as was pointed out in the discussion: both know the specific ‹traditions› of the design field very well: Even the one who aims to break the rules, has to know the rules beforehand. The group aims to work on questions that are interwoven with design education in Switzerland and beyond, also looking into the system of design education that is evaluated by the SERI (State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation) and peer reviewed every 5 years. Leading questions are: What does a designer need to know – and need to learn in order to be successful? The methodology consists in recording events and situations from everyday teaching and learning practices in which these or diverging representations of the «ideal designer» are articulated and reproduced, but also subverted. Their aim lies in constructing a sort of «counter-mythical person» in order to disrupt the relationship between a piece of work and its author.

Daniel Zea with Hyunji Lee and Andrea Nucamendi from HEAD-Genève have put their research focus on inequalities that foreign students encounter during their studies at the HEAD-Genève. They chose to especially emphasize non-European communities, as they seem to be particularly exposed. So far, they have identified a range of realms that impact equity and which they would like to touch on more in depth: Money, papers, language, artistic and conceptual references, discrimination and lack of technical lessons. As their group is composed of two foreign art students, one from Mexico and one from Korea, and is led by a Colombian teacher, their idea is to «get in contact with the subject of study, by the subjects being studied». They want to document all these inequities in video, photographs and sound recordings, in order to create a collection of material that forms an «artistic case-study» talking to students as well as teachers. Thereby, the emphasis is on how inequalities make students feel. As a final result, the group imagines an artistic piece that can have the form of a film, or an installation, or even a performance.

Martine Anderfuhren, Patricio André, Claire Bonnet, Fabio Fernandes Da Cruz and Ivan Gulizia from visual communication at HEAD-Genève are planning a series of events that, as a result, include the Otherness of students – the motto being «what you are reinforces your creativity». As a final result, their Otherness should be included into their course work and rendered productive on an overall basis instead of hampering. The planned events will at first be conducted within their own department of visual communication, such as an organizing of shared meals or quiz etc. These will enable exchanging on different professional developments, and on cultural and technical knowledge. In order for these exchanges to be fruitful, they propose to first make mini-events to create «godparent» relationships among all the students and teachers. The first of these mini-events has been planned in detail and will be announced by a «fire alarm». As they argue, it will allow for their project to start within a humoristic ambiance, as well as to have the entire school present on the same spot and to initiate the godparent relationships. However, they will keep the secret on further events and just give the advice to people that they should keep in touch with their godparents and godchildren, suggesting its helpfulness for the future. The first event is to take place mid of may.

Patrik Dasen with Soojin Lee from HEM Genève are leading a research amongst non-European students of the school with the aim of highlighting their socio-cultural and socio-economic background and current situation of studying in Geneva. This project, thus, evaluates both the music students potential needs in terms of a better integration in the general life of the institution and the potential socio-cultural added value each foreign student is, or can be, for the institution. In terms of methodology, the group first works on the a priori representation of music and students among students as well as reflected by the school, questioning Western traditional music and its symbolic power, as well as the economical, social and cultural students’ background, etc. They will conduct semi-directive interviews, starting with a few preliminary interviews with informants to establish the interview guideline. Second, they will also look into the effects of the relationship between interviewers and interviewees to reflect power relations inherent to the interview situation.

The team of Victor Cordero, Bernardo Di Marco and Micha Seidenberg works on the theoretical knowledge of music from the perspective of non-European students. Having an eliminatory function if not passed within the admissions’ process, the test of musical theory has exclusionary effects for specific student groups. It is actually highly based on competences acquired before the entry at the high school. Being given that the HEM wishes to integrate international students and thus students with a quite different knowledge from those built by the school of musical theory in Europe, a conflict of interest emerges that is the object of the research lead by this group. In order to prepare interviews with students and teachers, they are looking into the statistics made by the school for the admissions process, on, for example, the nationalities of the candidates – accepted and non-accepted – and other information gathered every year by the HEM. They also already have contacted students from non-European countries in order to exchange with them to know more about their relation to theory of music and the way it is taught at the HEM.

By Philippe Saner, Pauline Vessely, and Sophie Vögele