Pedagogical Entanglements

During my residency in partnership with Art Volt, I approached Esse’s archives looking for different strategies put into play by artists, curators, art critics, and other cultural agents to transform what, where, and how we learn. 


Rather than focusing on learning as a theme, my approach aligns with Rita Segato’s notion of pedagogy, which she describes as the “acts and practices that teach, habituate, and program individuals.”1 1  - Rita Segato, Contra-pedagogías de la crueldad (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2018), 11 (my translation). I was drawn to authors who initiated conversations regarding how our ways of doing and thinking permeate beyond singular artworks toward the ways we conceive ourselves as artistic communities, shaping our practices, narratives, and institutions. Following Segato, my research is guided by the question “How can we conceive and design counter-pedagogies capable of rescuing a sensibility and interconnectedness that can oppose the pressures of these times and, above all, that allows us to see alternative paths?”2 2  - Ibid., 15 (my translation).

The texts I discuss here give us tools with which to engage in critical practices built on self-knowledge, recognizing that we belong to networks of interdependence and that learning and unlearning go hand in hand. They show us that naming the positions from which we speak allows us to build a collective memory, honour those who came before us, and resist speaking for others. Furthermore, they evidence a drive to generate opportunities for dialogue and encounter that necessarily asks us to consider whom we address through our work. This, in turn, entails a recognition of the other and their voice, a redistribution of power through the possibility of enunciation.