Embodying the Other: Pedagogic and Performative Strategies Used in The Art of the Life-Model Course, 2002-2007. (original) (raw)
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"""The session discusses the role of the life-model in the teaching of life-drawing, and notes her/his conventional marginalisation in making images and in teaching art. Frequently regarded as an abject and monstrous figure whose body and presence is regulated by the tutor and life-drawers, the life-model is a naked, roving, chattering shape-shifter. Taming and containing the monstrous model is a key function of the tutor. But what happens when the life-model teaches the class? This paper discusses findings from The Art of the Life-Model at Leeds Art Gallery/ Leeds College of Art, 2002-2009 noting the shape-shifting benefits of model-led pedagogy. Errata - PLEASE NOTE: There is a formatting error on Appendix 5, also some of the photos have shifted from their original pages. Please ensure there are no photographs printed out at the top of the appendices' handouts if you are using them as teaching materials. . The box which is out of synch on Appendix 5 should read 'Verbal Direction. Tutor / Lead artist tells the model how to place their body.' There is a correctly-formatted copy of this spider graph in the appendices of the 2007 'Embodying the Other' report, also available to download here. Also please note - this paper is reproduced in Talks above. Further info: The session will invite participants to reflect on their own experiences and/ or perceptions of the functions, conventions and practice of working with life-models in a life-drawing situation. It will introduce teaching materials used on The Art of the Life-Model course to explore the conventions of life-drawing, the shape-shifting histories of the life-model, also a range of practices used to 'pose' the model. It will also introduce materials used on a concurrent programme WILMA - Women Into Life-Modelling Arts - a series of community workshops in which life-models explored the profession and discussed how their role is configured and presented to life-drawing students and artists. The session introduces discussion of the role of the life-model in the teaching of life-drawing, and notes her/his conventional marginalisation as a creative agent in the making of images. This marginalisation extends to the historical treatment of the model as an abject and monstrous figure whose body and presence is regulated by the tutor and life-drawers in the processes of life-drawing, and through the conventions of robing, screening and fixing, also by stillness, silence and distance. The model is a shape-shifter in the life-drawing space and convention demands that s/he is fixed. The session will discuss the development and experience of model-led teaching, discussing the monstrous implications of moving between the conventionally discrete positions of 'model' and 'tutor' and the effects of combining these roles. It will discuss how nudity is managed and negotiated with learners in this context. It will also discuss innovative ways of mark-making and drawing from the model for the life-drawing student working individually or collectively. The session will also invite discussion on the role and practice of life-drawing in public gallery spaces. The Art of the Life-Model was held at Leeds Art Gallery and each session started from an artwork in which the presence of both visible and invisible bodies could be traced. Students were encouraged to 'step into the picture' and to empathise with the world of the model through a mixture of drama-based and storytelling activities before engaging with life-drawing. The sessions involved teacher and learners in experimental life-drawing sessions using both the education workshop and the public spaces of the gallery. This took the negotiation of the roving, shape-shifting, chattering, naked and theatrical body of the life-model beyond the life-drawing space and into a public arena - a movement that raised questions about the performance of the grotesque, the marginalised, the visceral and the abject in the gallery space - its possibilities and its limits. It also took the act of drawing out of the closed world of the studio and into the public space raising questions about the changing function of the gallery as a process-based and 'making' space' and the implications for viewing inherent in this. The session will introduce sessional documents, photographs and examples from practice inviting new ideas on the role of the model in both closed and public life-drawing practice. The research paper offered here includes photographs from sessions at Leeds Art Gallery including a collaboration with Raphaelle de Groot, participants on The Art of the Life-Model and Cast-Off Drama projects at Leeds Art Gallery, UK between 2002-2012."""
Art Practice and the Community
2018
ART AS SOCIAL ACTION will be a general introduction and textbook to the field of social practice art and include valuable lesson plans offering examples of pedagogical projects for instructors at both the college and high school levels. With contributions written by leading social practice artists, teachers and thinkers it's content will be arranged thematically to around such themes as labor rights, environmental justice, urban policy, the rights of women and girls, inequality, migrant's rights, Black Lives Matter, the rights of prisoner's and the global nexus of art/labor/capital among other areas of topical concern. Some lesson plans will be written by the students, alumni and faculty members of Social Practice Queens (SPQ), a unique partnership between Queens College CUNY and the Queens Museum. The book will consist of two main parts. A set of introductory materials focused on the concept of teaching socially engaged art (with some of these essays having an associate...
2009
This paper addresses the relationship between art practice and artist-led pedagogy, drawing on my study of artists working on the Arts Council’s ‘Artists in Sites for Learning’ (AISFL) scheme and, more extensively, my interviews with artist educators working on the community education strand of Tate Modern’s Learning programme. Bold claims are increasingly made for the efficacy of artists working in education contexts by policy makers, and artist-led pedagogy has been seen by some gallery educators as a ‘powerful focus for all kinds of applied skills and learning’. Yet hitherto there has been relatively little research into artists’ perceptions of how and why they operate as they do. Both these studies aimed to explore how selected visual art practitioners defined themselves as artists, looking at what they do and the expertise they thought they possessed. They were designed as case studies and in each case a relatively small number of artists (nine in the AISFL research and five in...
Are we there yet? A Study Room Guide on Live Art and Feminism
Existing as both a website and in free, printed form, this multi-layered, multi-voiced Guide is a key component of LADA’s Restock Rethink Reflect Three mapping and marking the impact of performance on feminist histories and the contribution of artists to discourses around contemporary gender politics. Includes a survey of materials co-authored by Lois Weaver, Eleanor Roberts and the Live Art Development Agency. Also features a critical overview essay by Eleanor Roberts 'Feminist Live Art: Why Bodies? - A Restock, Reflect, Rethink Three Manifesto'. See link: http://www.studyroomguides.net/