Since the mid-1990s, artist Rainer Ganahl has been organizing reading seminars<\/em>, taking an approach characterized essentially by knowledge relations, acquisition, and circulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Held in museums, galleries, educational institutions, or simply at friends\u2019 places, these seminars, varying in length, gather participants from different backgrounds (family and friends, members of art, university, or activist communities, and others) to engage with a book or selection of works most often addressing democracy, Marxism, or the construction and politics of knowledge. Participants, who do not necessarily have expertise in the subject, become familiar with the texts at the same time, reading them in full and commenting on them in a discursive and dialogic format. Over the years, the writings of Elias Canetti, Friedrich Engels, Frantz Fanon, Antonio Gramsci, Alfred Jarry, Rosa Luxemburg, and Karl Marx have been studied in these gatherings, in which equality of intelligence and community of inexperience are established as fundamental pedagogical principles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
$\"Rainer$
Rainer Ganahl
<\/strong>Reading Seminars<\/em>, Lire Alfred Jarry, Les Laboratoires d\u2019Aubervilliers, Paris, 2007-2008
Photos : Courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
$\"Rainer$
Rainer Ganahl
<\/strong>Reading Seminars<\/em>, Reading Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, 2011.
Photos : permission de l\u2019artiste<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
$\"Rainer$
Rainer Ganahl
<\/strong>Reading Seminars<\/em>, Lire Alfred Jarry, Les Laboratoires d\u2019Aubervilliers, Paris, 2007-2008
Photos : permission de l\u2019artiste<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Ganahl\u2019s focus is not so much scholarly understanding but the work of appropriating through the discussions that reading provokes. What the group grasps or discusses becomes the framework or barometer for understanding the present context, and reading is seen as an activity that yields as much information about readers\u2019 thinking as it does about what the texts express.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Ganahl emphasizes, this approach \u201cmight be very quickly identified and categorized along the usual parameters of knowledge production and low key activism.\u201d^{2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 2 <\/a> - Rainer Ganahl in an interview with Craig Martin in Rainer Ganahl, Reading Karl Marx (London: Book Works, 2001), 33. 33. .<\/span>. Indeed, at first glance the reading seminars<\/em> don\u2019t appear to differ fundamentally from directed study sessions, university seminars, or reading groups sometimes set up in activist circles. The two dimensions of knowledge production and activism are clearly present in the reading seminars<\/em>. Moreover, Ganahl does not characterize his reading approach as being essentially artistic, preferring instead the terms \u201cnon-academic, non-institutional, non-disciplinary, dilettante, or pathetic.\u201d^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - Ibid .<\/span>The artwork consists in the documentation of the seminars, rather than in the seminars per se.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ganahl photographs and films the events, so that we may be able to aesthetically consider their modes of exchange and pedagogical configurations. He also offers documentation on his website and by publishing texts and interviews, such as Reading Karl Marx<\/em>and Imported: A Reading Seminar,<\/em>^{4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 4 <\/a> - Rainer Ganahl, Imported: A Reading Seminar (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1997), and Reading Karl Marx (London: Book Works, 2001).<\/span>allowing him to make a nexus of reflections available to an audience, most of whom have not directly participated in the meetings and discussions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand the photographs that document these seminars, it\u2019s useful to consider them in conjunction with the series Seminar\/Lecture<\/em> (1995 \u2014), composed of images taken during courses, lectures, and seminars that Ganahl has attended. These images are somewhat opaque when viewed separately, but as a body of work they constitute a striking visual essay on modes of circulation of academic, artistic, political, and other kinds of knowledge. In comparing photographs from the series Seminar\/Lecture<\/em> with those of the reading seminars<\/em>, it is possible to observe \u2014 through the spatial layout of the places, how the bodies are arranged, how they move, and the actions that these movements imply \u2014 different, even antagonistic modes of verbal transmission and circulation, as well as of possession of knowledge and authority. To give two obvious and recurrent examples: the frontal separation between professor and audience as opposed to conversation circles or group work, in which the position and identity of each person are more difficult to ascribe. Likewise, the seeming (and perhaps deceptive) passivity of listeners in lecture halls contrasts sharply with the sometimes-animated gestures made by reading group members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The visual and material nature of these images certainly corresponds to the conventional idea of an artwork more than the reading seminars<\/em> themselves do. But on a deeper level, the seminars exemplify a conception of art that extends beyond the notion of artworks altogether \u2014 even if we expand this notion to include immaterial work. The reading seminars<\/em>correspond to a situation characteristic of post-conceptual art, in which art-making can be a research process that is neither necessarily guided by a material outcome nor strictly limited in time and space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
$\"\"$
Suzanne Lacy & Knowle West Media Centre<\/strong>
University of Local Knowledge, Myles Nash – Sculpture Class, 2014
Photos : courtesy of Knowle West Media Centre, Bristol<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
University of Local Knowledge<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Whereas the groups formed at Ganahl\u2019s reading seminars<\/em> are ephemeral, other pedagogical experiences arising from artists\u2019 initiatives engage more comprehensively with the idea of community. In 2008, artist Suzanne Lacy collaborated with the Knowle West Media Centre in Bristol to found the mutual and virtual University of Local Knowledge (ULK). Covering such diverse topics as raising animals and growing vegetables, crocheting and rapping, computer programming and making sculpture, writing poetry and doing car maintenance, the ULK\u2019s website^{5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 5 <\/a> - University of Local Knowledge, < www.ulk. org.uk\/>.<\/span> gathers expertise presented in over 900 thirty-second to four-minute videos. The videos highlight the knowledge and \u00adknow-how found in the daily life of Knowle West, a neighbourhood built in the 1930s for a working class that now faces unemployment and social stigma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As in a traditional university, the offerings are sorted by different fields of knowledge and organized in courses categorized by department: Activism, Policy and Volunteering; Animals; Arts; Belief and Spirituality; Business and Work; Food and Drink; Friends and Family; Health and Wellbeing; Heritage and History; Mechanics and Engineering; Science and Technology; Sport. These departments correspond only partially to those common in universities, since they issue from local experience in which knowledge is gained through peer learning. For someone outside the Knowle West communities, watching the videos can actually prove to be somewhat disappointing or frustrating. The videos often simply report on individual experience or share information about a field of interest. Someone discusses a skill they have or an area of interest, without necessarily giving the viewer all the tools required for in-depth and independent learning. What is at stake seems to be to create conditions of reclamation, self-esteem, and self-organization for a community that is becoming aware of itself through the quantity and diversity of videos collected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lacy is applying a set of reflections and skills developed through her extensive art practice to a pedagogical and social project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since the 1970s, her practice has revolved around forms of social engagement, participatory art, and community-building. Moreover, in her more recent installations and performances, she has often combined modes and approaches typical of a school, course, or lesson. In his 1970 book Teaching and Learning as Performing Art<\/em>, Robert Filliou endeavoured \u201cto show how some of the problems inherent to teaching can be \u00adsolved \u2014 or let\u2019s say eased \u2014 through an application of the participation techniques developed by artists.\u201d^{6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 6 <\/a> - Robert Filliou et al., Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts (New York: Kasper K\u00f6nig, 1970), 12<\/span>Filliou presents a concept of teaching as a facilitative practice, a method of support that creates conditions under which learners gain knowledge autonomously rather than simply assimilating it, and thus act as fully recognized subjects. Judy Chicago, who set up educational projects in which Lacy actively participated during the same period,^{7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 7 <\/a> - For example, the Feminist Art Program set up by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro in 1970 at Fresno State College (now California State University, Fresno), and then at the California Institute of the Arts.<\/span>asserts that \u201cinterpreting the teacher\u2019s role as a facilitator proved to be an effective way of combining education and empowerment. [empowerment]^{8<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 8 <\/a> - Judy Chicago, \u201cFeminist Art Education: Made in California,\u201d judychicago.com (2001), 3, <judychicago.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/made-in-california.pdf.> 3, . .<\/span>” Just as Chicago considers this to be \u201cthe most desirable goal for teaching”^{9<\/sup><\/a><\/span>,} 9 <\/a> - Ibid .<\/span>Lacy also makes it a key aspect of her current art practice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
$\"\"$
Suzanne Lacy & Knowle West Media Centre<\/strong>
Edwin (Ted) Cockrell – Features of a Jowett 1933 Kestral, 2014.
Photos : courtesy of Knowle West Media Centre, Bristol <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
Ganahl\u2019s focus is not so much scholarly understanding but the work of appropriating through the discussions that reading provokes. What the group grasps or discusses becomes the framework or barometer for understanding the present context, and reading is seen as an activity that yields as much information about readers\u2019 thinking as it does about what the texts express. <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
$\"\"$
Suzanne Lacy & Knowle West Media Centre<\/strong>
University of Local Knowledge, Claire Nash – Taming Wild Horses, video still, 2014.
Photo : courtesy of Knowle West Media Centre, Bristol<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
Pain commun<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Oscillating between artistic and ethnographic exploration, Marie Preston\u2019s art practice involves varied situations that share the aim of co-constructing work with those involved, using an approach that Preston describes as the \u201cinquiry-based method\u201d (t\u00e2tonnement m\u00e9thodique).^{10<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 10 <\/a> - Marie Preston, \u201cBiographie,\u201d mariepreston.com, (our translation).<\/www.marie-preston.com><\/span> This expression directly references the educator and educational reformer C\u00e9lestin Freinet, who established inquiry-based learning (t\u00e2tonnement exp\u00e9rimental) as a method of learning for students and of critical thinking for teachers.^{11<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 11 <\/a> - See C\u00e9lestin Freinet, \u0152uvres p\u00e9dagogiques, vol. 1 (Paris: Seuil, 1994), 355 \u2014 82. 355-382.<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2018, Preston set up a group of amateur bakers that meets regularly to bake bread. Samia Achoui, Aranka Cadene, Carole Fritsch, Line Gigot, Martine Guitton, Loyce Kragba, Sophia Malou, Sabrine Malou Mebarki, Preston, and Graziella Semerciyan share their interest in this activity by mutually enriching their relevant knowledge and experience. They share information acquired from books, friends and relatives, or professional bakers, then integrate the techniques and hone their expertise by applying this knowledge together. In parallel to baking together, the group is consolidated through collective thought about issues related to the production of flour and bread and the co-creative process. Ecosophy and ecofeminism, reflections on notions of community and cooperation, and even the fundamentals of permaculture feed the participants\u2019 discussion as they prepare the yeast, assemble and knead dough, and bake bread, doing it all with care so that the baking process may succeed. They occasionally also read texts relevant to these fields of thought and activity in the context of their regular baking sessions \u2014 sometimes producing traces of this activity ^{12<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 12 <\/a> - See Marie Preston, \u201cBoulanger l\u2019\u00e9cof\u00e9minisme,\u201d video recording, May 27, 2019, 5 min 33 s, <vimeo.com\/338676164>.<\/span> \u2014 or of public events that are midway between workshops and performative readings.^{13<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 13 <\/a> - Listen to Pain Commun on the radio program La biblioth\u00e8que grise, Ch. 3, September 21, 2019, www.duuuradio.fr\/<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
$\"\"$
Marie Preston<\/strong>
<\/strong>Marques \u00e0 pain<\/em>, Atelier Pain commun, 110, Saint-Denis, 6 avril 2019.
Photo : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the differences in their art practices, Ganahl, Lacy, and Preston share certain pedagogical ideas regarding the reciprocity of teaching and learning processes, the collective nature of knowledge production, and the reconciling of education and life both within and outside institutionalized settings of knowledge acquisition.
One difference among the projects examined here, however, concerns the position that the artist adopts within the group: Ganahl derives material from his reading seminars<\/em>, for which he retains full authorship; Lacy started the ULK project, but it continues beyond her involvement; Preston seeks a situation of co-creation while still remaining her project\u2019s identifiable initiator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nevertheless, in all cases, the artists do not reduce education to the mere transmission of content but instead conceptualize it as a social process. Even when there is transmission of information or ideas between someone who knows and someone who learns \u2014 and clearly this occurs at times \u2014 the roles are not definitive and have validity only within a collective ecosystem. As educator Paulo Freire writes, \u201cI believe that I can state without equivocation\u2026 that all educational practice requires the existence of \u2018subjects,\u2019 who while teaching, learn. And who in learning also teach.\u201d^{14<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 14 <\/a> - Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom, trans. Patrick Clarke (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2001), 67. [1996]. 84.<\/span>Moreover, in the approach advocated by Freire, \u201cno one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world.\u201d ^{15<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 15 <\/a> - Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergan Ramos (New York: Continuum, 2005), 80. 62-63.<\/span>The<\/p>\n\n\n\n
interweaving of pedagogy and art may be relevant today because art offers effective modes of thought and action for making us aware of the \u201cworld\u201d as mediator, for rendering it perceptible as environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Translated from the French by Oana Avasilichioaei<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n
J\u00e9r\u00f4me Dupeyrat, Marie Preston, Rainer Ganahl, Suzanne Lacy<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Contemporary art offers many example of artists who have adopted practices inspired by pedagogy, teaching, or research: they conduct investigations, give performative lectures, transpose their artistic activity to pedagogical situations or tools, and so on. In social representations, as in practice, teaching and pedagogy are often associated with the image of someone facing a group and transmitting knowledge in a more or less vertical manner to students who participate more or less (in)actively in their learning, but many artists reject this model. Several have ridiculed it (for example, \u00c9ric[NOTE count=1]Duyckaerts[\/NOTE][REF count=1]See in particular \u00c9ric Duyckaerts, How to Draw a Square, video-lecture, 1999, <documentsdartistes.org\/artistes\/duyckaerts\/repro2-4.html>[\/REF]), but my focus here will be on those who transform teaching and learning into porous and reciprocal art practices developed within groups or communities.<\/br>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3600,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[882],"tags":[],"numeros":[368],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[957],"artistes":[1993,1976,1978],"thematiques":[],"type_post":[],"class_list":["post-5478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post","numeros-98-knowledge","auteurs-jerome-dupeyrat-en","artistes-marie-preston-en","artistes-rainer-ganahl-en","artistes-suzanne-lacy-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272251,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5478\/revisions\/272251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5478"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=5478"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=5478"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=5478"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=5478"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=5478"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=5478"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=5478"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=5478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}