10/03/2005
Abstract of the dissertation-project, practical part, University of Flensburg,
dissertation in process of development, University of Bremen, Dep. Science of Culture.

By using the artistic method of mapping, students devise art education through a new way. Oriented towards artistic working processes, they develop innovative ideas for education. Here, art appears twice: in the procedure of mapping and in the artistic work which represents the starting point. Out of their artistic working processes the students developed their ideas for education which were tested out on an 8th grade of a secondary school. My question of research: What is transmitted from art into the mapping approach and into education?

My research begins at the point of intersection between university and school. In the context of apprenticeship of future art teachers, I see university as a place of stimulation for the invention and testing of didactic concepts. I am interested in concepts of school classes – not according to prefabricated products which are to be copied exactly – but according to a didactic theory which is always and only taking place at singular applications of respective school practices. As an university teacher I therefor ask myself: How can I prompt students to formulate pedagogical and didactic interrogative clauses and to follow these? In the context of the subject art I ask about the special challenges and new resources which result from mapping approach to contemporary art.

Especially in the case of having practiced it in their own studies, teachers can create new learning situations again and again, where pursuing and reflecting on independent and individual ways of learning is possible. On the other hand an existential and understandible wish of university students exists just in learning how to cope with a single lesson and then the whole school day in general. Unfortunately for the moment nothing else is more obvious than copying good teaching tricks and collecting tasks which pupils enjoy, so they do not question anything. But one should think just the other way round: Students should be confirmed in their curiosity and should make their exploration on teaching their own thing. Their possible questions on teaching and school could come across the center of the approach, if exploration of teaching is the topic of a seminar [ e.g. in the aspect of one’s own role- and expectation attribution, cp. Seydel 2005]. If so, the ‘How can I do this?’ is not decisive, but the question ‘ How do I perceive education?’ or ‘Which question on education can I ask?’, for example: ‘How does a learner come to the point of asking himself a question?’

For the students the challenge of devising questions on themselves means to pluck up courage for questioning something out of their horizon of knowledge (which is always biographically moulded). By putting themselves into question with their self- and schooldrafts, a special attitude is required, out of which a reflecting perception is possible. This attitude has got an existential dimension. That suggests the necessity of aesthetic shares at the studying for the teaching profession. Though, aesthetic perception contains self-attentiveness. In this, the perceptor is present, although he or she does not explicitly make an issue out of him/herself.

Didactic can be regarded as a qualification for a theory dominated reflection of education and for a conception, as well as for an inquiry of educational situations. This will prepare for working out scripts of action by oneself, rather than keeping normative requirements ready or exclusively suggesting the training of skills or certain routines of action. Then it is the main issue to test, invent and communicate conducts as attitudes and scopes of action as craft of reflection (How the notion of artistic education as an overlapping principle in school and university suggests, cp. Kettel 2004. But also actually and concretely converted, In the approach of Andreas Brenne, for instance, using methods of ethnographic and artistic field studies for the reflection of the own teaching activity). Such processes of theorization and reflection are in constant interaction with practice. These produce less regular but rather singular transmissions of a reconstructed educational situation into a possible theoretic counterpart.

The difficulty of transmission in art pedagogy is firstly an exceptional feature. Students at paedagogical university with the subject art are dealing with the problem how to gain ideas and concepts out of their own aesthetic and artistic works for pedagogical situations. Therefor I particularly start from the approach of contemporary art:

According to an art which is process of its production, every artistic work can be interpreted as an invention of a special form of perception and action. A structure of operation is given, though, a respective admission as well as ways of approach have to be invented consistently. So for a perceptive subject, artistic works can contain new possibilities of perspectives which are releases for provocations or new point of views and practices. My fundamental question focusses on how to make that useful for the invention of innovative educational processes anew (maybe the artistic works themselves do not even occur in class).

What happens between an artistic workpiece and an observer-subject, or in other terms, ‘user-’ subject (Pazzini 2000), takes place in an imaginary room and is not tangible. The space between subject and artwork mediates just symbolically, e.g. in language and medial transitions (Here, Maria Peters researched e.g. creative writing processes and medial spaces of transition in a pedagogical context.). In this connection artistic approaches of mapping become important.

The term ‘mapping’ is used both in scientific connections and for the identification of artistic functionings and in scopes of art-didactical considerations (Above all, Klaus-Peter Busse called attention to the efficiency of this kind of approach for art pedagogy. For instance, with the attempt of displacement, Christiane Brohl takes up the mapping art practice of landart for art-pedagogical strategies. At the moment, Andrea Sabisch is searching for ‘graphies’, that is generative documentation- and notation processes which she comprehends as a staging of search.). Mapping allows me to search for moments of the production of connections. I am seeking between completely different procedures and medial products, from notes in writing, drawn lines over photograph- or video documentations up to staged und performative actions, as well as the thinking in virtual nets.

The term ‘mapping’ names approaches like observation, collecting and notation. Thereby a relationship structure between observer and his observations results, as well as within the documentations. The example of the map indicates that mapping is not a direct reproduction, no linear projection of a real room into a symbolic room but a transformation with certain rules of the game. The territory – seen as a metaphor for the observed section of the real room (or rather the field of mapping) – is not the map. In fact, the territory arises with the map at the same time and the map with the territory. Map and territory only make sense in their interdependency.

That requires an attitude which enables an awareness of the ‘how’ of one’s own actions. It becomes observable, how actions, after dynamically forming rules of the game, produce a singular procedure. Mappings can be seen as a way of inventory; they have the function of cognition. Those are approaches which remain complex and do not establish hierarchies. Mappings are multidimensional, fictitious and experimental.

Those very properties of mapping inspired on the one hand processes of art approach. On the other hand they deliver a variety of medial traces. These even enable a self-reflection as well as exchanges and negotiations about these conversational processes inside the seminar or a class. By taking on the artistic mapping, my research-setting consists of a triple jump:

Last summer semester, future teacher students mapped their contention with contemporary art in the context of a course practical of art education at the University of Flensburg. Here, art appears twice in the run-up: in the approach of mapping and in the artistic work which refers to the mapping approach.

In the winter semester 2004/2005, educational tests are held at a secondary school in Flensburg. At present, this school will be enlarged as an art pedagogical ‘lab’-school which is initiated by Manfred Blohm. Here, a practice room will be constructed which offers an experimental scope for development, both at individual frameworks and in the context of major scientific projects. At the same time it will present a supply for reflection and a discourse in school as well as in university.

The course practical that I offer works with the interlacing of different action and reflection levels: The students chose an artistic work individually, on which they had to work artistically mapping. About their process of contention they could consult each other theoretically as well as practically. Besides the talking about their own products and experiences and the forms of practice of the mapping, other actions and performative work order took place, with and in front of the seminar participants.

Not a ‘method of interpretation’ of certain art is meant. Contemporary art rather raises the question of new ways for handling and approach by making recent approach- and comprehension forms senseless. Art, which deals with intermediation processes and communication structures itself, points out forms of orientation which can be very efficient for older art, too.

A question that raises for me: How far does art itself originate approaches and perspectives which are essential for the beginning and for the further course of a dialogue reception? By engaging with an artistic work, I construct it anew in my awareness. And thus certain communication forms are given through them, I will be constructed in my specific reference. The structure of the artistic work affects, channels and changes my perception.

In the processes that took place, I see three fields of particular importance: 1. The independent forms of approach on art and the interest of the students to schedule class self-researched and to develop perspectives on school and pupils. 2. The actual responses and actions of the pupils as well as the perception of the class teacher and 3. In the frame of university as an institution of research, the knowledge about my interest as a researching seminar supervisor. From my point of view, it is just the net of the different scopes through which the single levels of actions become apparent as a chance of perspective and which encourages the invention of new trial spaces.