METHODOLOGY

Artistic research is about inventing a structure that allows for the means of research to develop in tandem with its content. Thinking radically is about looking for a form while researching its contents, rather than presupposing it. (Bouteloup, 2020)

HACKING (ART) EDUCATION developed thanks to various invitations from art and education institutions interested in hosting introductory presentations on Arte Útil. Each invitation was used to propose generative activities as the source of curriculum-as-toolkit.

The starting point is the study of the Arte Útil archive* as a repository of practices that can be repurposed and adapted through usership* to respond to the needs of constituencies*. Therefore, the project consists of a curriculum to explore the totality of learners’ experiences that occur in the educational process through the means of art.

The Arte Útil methodology builds on the principles of socially engaged art practices*, feminist-engaged pedagogy* and the undercommons*. It proposes tactics to rehearse the future, and it highlights the necessity for artists and educators not to merely react to certain events but rather to prevent those events by creating artworks that might suggest a different idea of how the future could be.

The methodological approach that Arte Útil proposes helps to:

👉Encourage the formation of ‘constituencies’ – rather than communities - as sites of social and political struggle that use the means of art to anticipate change. The temporality, fluidity, and constantly changing nature of the constituencies go beyond the idea of a community that participates in the realisation of a project.

👉Put conversation, cooperation, and kinship at the centre of developing a dialectical exchange between constituents following the approach of feminist-engaged pedagogy. Nevertheless, this approach does not necessarily need to generate a consensus among the subjects involved in the study.

👉Apply the curriculum developed following Arte Útil’s methodology as the tool for study in both museums and universities. The fact that it is self-directed by constituencies who operate as early users makes it flexible and, therefore, adaptable.

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References

Bouteloup, M. (2020) Autohistoria as praxis. In: Rito, C. and Balaskas, B. (ed.) Institution as praxis. New curatorial directions for collaborative research. Berlin: Sternberg Press. pp. 156-169.