School as Material and Teacher as Conceptual Artist

The topics of this paper are “school as material” and “teacher as conceptual artist”. If school—conceptualized beyond schooling—can be thought of as material, how do artists who work as teachers (or through teaching) make that material pliable? How do they then practice with that material as conceptual artists? First, a robust material literacy must emerge. Artists’ working in this manner need to generatively grapple with the materiality of school intending to find its points of resistance, softness, and pliability. In a dialogical/horizontalized setting the artist may need to learn the mechanics and logistics of being within the learning community and engaging with its stakeholders. This material learning happens alongside the artist performing a deep textual-review of the various fields that are at play in that particular artist’s inquiry (e.g. local school history, contemporary art theory and practice, philosophy of education, etc.). The artist and the communities they become a part of—as well intentioned as they may be—cannot afford to dabble in bad pedagogy or bad art! All the while expertise and concretization must be contested indefinitely as part of the inherent dynamism of both art and learning. School as material is a continuous project that requires the artist is dedicated to the process for the de-spectacularized long-term. As such, “school as material” and “teacher as conceptual artist” begin to fall out of the socially engaged art paradigm because over time these modes-of-operation decrease in visibility—and artworld cache—as the life/art lines truly become blurred.