The idea that we can always be, and indeed are, engaged with the activity of play is great news for those of us who secretly felt like we never grew up. I found it particularly interesting, because it positioned the necessity of play in looking at and understanding art. Or as Gadamer calls it……
****!!! ‘TRANSFORMATION INTO STRUCTURE’ !!!****
In Vilhauer’s review of Gadamer’s approach to the meaning of play, ‘Human play reaches its ultimate consummation, according to Gadamer, in the work of art.’ Quite an assertion for those of us who’s relationship to the word play tends to conjure up images of Super Mario and Luigi, running around chasing a ball, or holding a deck of cards in your hands.
What does it mean then, if art is the means by which we reach the most supreme understanding of play, and how does this change the way we teach?
People often feel ill equipped or intimidated when asked to comment on a piece of art, as if there is only ever one way to consider a work, and interpreting it incorrectly renders the onlooker a philistine. There is an inherent fear of looking foolish as a result of saying something ‘wrong’. This is particularly prevalent when teaching in digital spaces, where students are often reluctant to speak. It’s hard to ignore the pressure of articulating yourself in a way that expresses an authentic self that translates to Microsoft teams, in addition to dealing with the deafening silences that fill online spaces. Talking about art in the online space of a crit or tutorial is understandably a daunting prospect for many. However, the propositions made in this text allow us to see that when encountering art in these contexts, the act of looking, thinking, considering, imagining, questioning, disliking, liking, probing, falls under the category of communicating with something through play. As Robert Lumsden declares, we have to encourage students to, ‘Never be afraid to ask questions; they do not reveal ignorance so much as a lively and enquiring mind.’ Through the process of looking at and interacting with art a nexus of a relationship is formed, and within that relationship there is a back and forth, a to and fro that leads to an accumulation of knowledge, which can then amount to a form of understanding.
This can be described as an ontological process, and therefore a process of metamorphosis, that encourages the participant to invest in being. An ‘ontological event’ takes place where the participant and artwork both have an opportunity to be transformed. The artwork is given a life! As such, it has the potential to live through the consideration of another and the other can reach a superior mode of being through considering the artwork. Gloria Dall’Alba’s paper on ontology further explains the pedagogy of engaging with students in a similar manner, raising several points about the effectiveness of actively engaging with the process of teaching as an ontological activity ie. a mode of being, instead of a spoon fed/hierarchical activity.
Dall’Alba’s writing about pedagogy was particularly stirring, as it reminded me of my experiences encountering this for myself. Whenever I signed up for tutorials on my MA, I would have seemingly nonsensical and rambling conversations with one particular tutor that visited the school frequently. Our discussions led to me forming realisations about my practice (and myself) that I hadn’t been able to articulate, or realise before, and the first time this happened I took it to be a fluke, but after reading this chapter about ‘The pedagogical relationship’ I realised that this tutor was in fact facilitating me in my learning. Our conversations were a perfect demonstration of Gadamer’s notion of play. The chats we had were a collaborative activity that allowed me to use the resources of both her knowledge and my own internal understanding of self to further my development, as both an artist and an individual. As Martin Heidegger states, ‘And why is teaching more difficult than learning? Not because the teacher must have a larger store of information, and have it always ready. Teaching is more difficult than learning because what teaching calls for is this: let learn. The real teacher, in fact, lets nothing else be learned than – learning.’ When engaging with this tutor, the simple act of active listening, and probing where necessary, broadened the scope of our conversations and therefore my perspective on how our tutorials were a place for me to play around with thoughts, ideas and emotions. I was able to take an active role in developing an understanding of how I learn and how to learn.
I have, however, also experienced the antithesis of this. As the only black student in a predominantly white class, when I informed my tutors of feeling uncomfortable and unable to fully discuss the racial politics and content of my work in group discussions/tutorials, I was often met with resistance. In her paper Dall’Alba addresses the reality of resistance to changing pedagogical ideas around teaching and used it as an opportunity to encourage collaboration with her students. Instead of deferring to a ‘teacher as authority’ model, she engaged students in a critique of their expectations of the traditional teacher/student relationship and challenged them to consider how to work outside of their initial understanding of this. She went on to state that collaborating with students in this way created a shift in perspective and allowed students to change the way they worked. This sort of revelation is meaningful because it enables me to see how I could have resolved some of the complicated discussions I had with my own tutors about institutional racism within the university and how it was affecting critique of my work in tutorials and crit discussions. It demonstrates to me the importance of using feedback as an opportunity to work with students to resolve issues or concerns, and it allows me to see how to tackle dealing with potential resistance to course content for ex.
So if I think about teaching, there is an opportunity to use the online learning space as a place for inquisitive, collaborative and open dialogue, and activities can be used in a way that prioritises play as the mode of learning.
One way this can be accomplished is by creating smaller study groups within the student cohort. For example, I’ve planned two sound workshops that explore themes around developing narratives and cultural histories through the use of sound. The workshops are designed to help students play with found material, personal recordings/discography, images/videos, in an attempt to encourage the students to see the important relationship between open ended exploratory investigation, narrative, discovery of the self and the relationship this has to an artistic practice. The students that take part will be kept to a small number, and they’ll be able to participate in a way that allows them to contribute content towards the workshop itself (via Object Based Learning), giving them a chance to shape and lead the conversations we have as a group.
In a warm up activity, I’ve asked students to find images or videos of artworks which they then have to find a corresponding sound to go with. The sound can be complimentary, contradictory, subversive, illustrative, quite literally anything they want. It’s an oppurtunity for them to play through the method of researching and experimenting with a range of different online materials as a means to produce something quickly and without the pressure or need for it to be fully resolved. I’ve provided an example below: play the song in the video beneath the painting of Miss Mona Lisa and listen to it in its entirety, whilst looking at the painting.
This activity is an example of how the pieces by Vilhauer and Dall’Alba have helped me consider my relationship to play, and its role in education and how we interact with art. Going forward I hope to use play in my lessons as a means for learning. It’s my hope that this will then allow students to produce work that encourages independent thinking/a way for developing self expression/actualisation via the act of making.