Art students are revoluting

IN the grand scheme of provocative exhibition titles, The Ignorant Art School surely has to rank in the top tier. Particularly, you might note, given that this particular programme takes place in the Cooper Gallery, the exhibition space at Dundee’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design – or at least it would if we weren’t currently all locked up in our own personal coops.

And whilst some might think that the curator in question may have to batten down the hatches in the face of angry art school tutors – well, art schools really aren’t like that. This is the kind of apparent dissent that art schools secretly revel in, or at least, I strongly suspect they do.

“The students were a bit shocked at first,” laughs Sophia Hao, curator, somewhat frazzled after a long day’s Zoom video meetings. “But that’s my intention! Only if you start with the question – how can we call it the Ignorant Art School – can you embrace it.

“You have to read the whole title!” she says, referring to the fact that the second part of the title – very academic this, for these must always have their sub-titles – is: 5 Sit-Ins Towards Creative Emancipation.

“People are genuinely very excited, apart from the first shock. The students understand it’s out of the norm, and it’s quite exciting for them.”

The phrase “sit-ins” probably gives the game away. This is about activism, and reimagining the fundamental parameters of the pedagogical framework – the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners. Let’s face it, what parent hasn’t desperately tried to reimagine a few pedagogical frameworks over the past year? It was the French philosopher, Jacques Ranciere’s book The Ignorant Schoolmaster, about an exiled early 19th century school teacher who “formulated a teaching method that dissolved hierarchies in conventional pedagogical practice,” that sparked Hao’s interest.

The Ignorant Art School is about making equality a natural practice rather than just an ideal of education, and about investigating the future possibilities of art education, and rethinking the relationship between art and society.

Potential topics on what seems like must amount to a sizeable “curriculum” ranged from issues arising out of the tuition fees debate, to equality, inclusion, decolonisation of the curriculum, access and the commercialisation of eduction. “There are a lot of projects going on around the world, of artists involved in experiments, in thinking about how they can provide more accessible pedagogical situations.”

The first of the five Sit-Ins will be run by artist Ruth Ewan, whose interest in society and politics most recently saw her rework her 2018 Edinburgh Art Festival project Sympathetik Magick for the ephemeral 2020 skein of the festival that wasn’t.

Ewan’s work is always engaging, and here promises much, launching the project with her online History Class: An A-Z of Dundonian Dissent, a playful look at the history of activism and feminism in Dundee, which is filled with what promise to be really quite fascinating stories on characters