{"id":10677,"date":"2018-12-06T09:27:22","date_gmt":"2018-12-06T09:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artjournalstg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=10677"},"modified":"2020-07-24T15:36:14","modified_gmt":"2020-07-24T15:36:14","slug":"making-being","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=10677","title":{"rendered":"Making & Being"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Making and Being<\/em> book cover, video stills, workshop image, card game, and interactive interface.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BFAMFAPhD is a collective of artists and educators that employs visual and performing arts, policy reports, and teaching tools to advocate for cultural equity in the United States. Our work as a collective is to bring people together to analyze and reimagine relationships of power in the arts. In 2014 we (Susan Jahoda and Caroline Woolard) self-published Artists Report Back<\/em> to raise awareness about art student debt, to suggest how established artists and recent arts graduates might advocate for one another, and to propose cultural equity initiatives to recognize and strengthen solidarity art economies in the United States.1<\/a><\/sup> Our Report<\/em> received national attention, placing us in dialogue with student organizers, policymakers, administrators, and government officials.2<\/a><\/sup> Although Artists Report Back <\/em>used quantified data to advocate for structural change in higher education, it did not focus on what happens in the classroom: on arts pedagogy. This is the focus of our new publication effort.<\/p>\n

In late 2014, we began working on a multiplatform pedagogical project. <\/em>With illustration, design, and pedagogical support from Fellow Emilio Martinez Poppe, we created a book, a series of videos, a deck of cards, and an interactive website with freely downloadable content called Making and Being: A Guide to Embodiment, Collaboration, and Circulation in the Visual Arts<\/em>. Our project is a contribution to the ongoing work of the larger collective, BFAMFAPhD, and is motivated by an understanding that, as teachers in BFA and MFA programs, spaces of learning may be some of the only places where students can find a community of people who do not question the value of the arts. And yet, while we appreciate project-based and experiential learning in studio arts pedagogy, we believe that studio programs may be failing students and faculty who want to talk about collaboration, healing, politics, and\/or political economy. We developed a card game to offer students and faculty a resource to encourage discussions and\/or art projects about these topics.<\/p>\n

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Making and Being<\/em>, exhibition at the Dekalb Gallery, Pratt Institute, PROJECT THIRD<\/em> residency, summer 2018. Photograph by Daniel Terna.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our Making and Being<\/em> card game uses varying configurations of cards to generate a unique prompt that students may use to make a project. Each prompt is made up of three conceptual parts:<\/p>\n

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  1. a capacity<\/em>: an ability to acquire knowledge and embody a way of being (a quality of presence) in daily actions and practices;<\/li>\n
  2. a phase<\/em>: a recognizable stage in the development of a project\u2019s life;<\/li>\n
  3. a support practice<\/em>: the ways in which artists\u2019 needs are met in order to rest, dream, and work on any project.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The card game invites students to approach projects holistically, looking at their own learning goals and the life and death of their projects in relation to their social and emotional needs. Rather than thinking exclusively about form, theme, or context, the prompts place these approaches to art making within a framework that includes the circulation of artists and of artworks. Each card concludes with a reminder to notice the generative contradictions that arise when you locate what is possible and impossible on different scales: individually, interpersonally, and institutionally.<\/p>\n

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    Making and Being<\/em>, exhibition at the Dekalb Gallery, Pratt Institute, PROJECT THIRD<\/em> residency, summer 2018. Photograph by Daniel Terna.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Here are three examples of how the card game might be used to modify student projects, facilitate collaborative learning outcomes, and prompt classroom discussions:<\/p>\n

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    1. A student might draw a prompt that asks them to practice skillful listening (capacity<\/em>) as they mediate conflict (a phase<\/em> of labor), while acknowledging that the completion of the project relies upon earning money through their day job (a practice<\/em> of support<\/em>). The student might interpret the prompt to make a drawing, video, or photograph that reflects upon a moment of listening and mediation at work. The prompt might enable discussions with students such as: What would it mean to understand support (or any of the phases in the lifecycle) as integral to your process as an artist? For teachers, reflecting on their own professional practices as mediators of a discipline, the card might prompt questions such as: Where will graduates of our programs go with the disciplinary knowledge of painting or sculpture, and the ability to paint or sculpt, but no understanding of the mechanisms that enable their projects and ideas to circulate in the world?<\/li>\n
    2. A student might receive a prompt that reads: \u201cPractice group coordination as you recycle materials. Don\u2019t forget to listen to others.\u201d In creating this prompt, we used Generative Somatics\u2019 definition of coordination as being \u201creliably able to effectively collaborate with others in teams, partnerships, and alliances, and remain responsive to evolving conditions.\u201d3<\/a><\/sup> The student might decide to create a project in collaboration with members of a sustainability student group on campus. They might decide to learn about the group by participating in their meetings and by interviewing members one-on-one about the history and current practices of the recycling program on campus. After listening to members of the group, the student might decide to create a large-scale project, including audio recordings, as well as found materials from one of the school\u2019s recycling centers.<\/li>\n
    3. Another student, interacting with the card game during project work in class, might take the same prompt as described above (\u201cPractice group coordination as you recycle materials. Don\u2019t forget to listen to others.\u201d) and create a series of drawings using materials recycled from a prior project. Over the course of an in-class production workshop, the student might challenge themselves to listen more closely in general, which may translate to active listening: asking someone who is rarely listened to if they would like to speak up, or encouraging their peers to also listen to that student.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Our Making and Being Card Game<\/em> is part of a larger multiplatform pedagogical project currently underway. We are writing a book, Making and Being: <\/em>A Guide to Embodiment, Collaboration and Circulation in the Visual Arts,<\/em> due to be published in the summer or fall of 2019. The other facets of the Making and Being <\/em>project are a book, a series of videos, a deck of cards, and an interactive website with freely downloadable content, each of which offers practices of collaboration, contemplation, and social-ecological analysis for visual artists. Making and Being<\/em> is for arts educators who want to connect art to economy; for students who want to make artworks that reflect the conditions of their own production. Making and Being<\/em> provides a framework that asks artists to explore both who they are becoming as they make projects, and what their projects are becoming as they take shape and circulate in the world.<\/p>\n

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      Making and Being<\/em>, pedagogical tools, exhibition at the Dekalb Gallery, Pratt Institute, PROJECT THIRD<\/em> residency, summer 2018. Photograph by Daniel Terna.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

      The Making and Being Card Game <\/em>draws from the frameworks in the larger pedagogical project, which aim to connect art to economy and to support artists who want to make artworks that reflect the conditions of their own production. We created a card game in addition to our book, because a card-based method allows students to work with a specific prompt for a project while beginning to sense the larger conceptual framework that structures our book. The structure of the card game encourages learners to confront the topics of an artist\u2019s capacities, production processes, and means of support in a playful, but thoughtful and embodied way.<\/p>\n

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      Making and Being<\/em>, workshop with Jeff Kasper’s class, exhibition at the Dekalb Gallery, Pratt Institute, PROJECT THIRD<\/em> residency, summer 2018. Photograph by Daniel Terna.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

      Our book further explains the philosophies behind our effort as action-oriented<\/em>, community-<\/em> and place-based<\/em>, socially just<\/em>, and critical<\/em>. We ask students to:<\/p>\n