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Verina, your point below has got me thinking: _I was thinking about the issue of what is inherent to learning? Is there not also a thinking about a future, or speculation? If our focus is directed on to these forms of the educational, to what degree are we also proposing to think 'the future'. "Imaginary schools" I mean, yes, of course it has this future element but when you put it in those terms it makes me think how people often skew their ideas on what to teach towards the past. I'm thinking here of the resistance regularly put up towards new subjects coming in in schools or people insisting that standards in schools are slipping. I'm wondering to what extent those judgements are made as a result of the idea that past educational systems offer a better/more rounded knowledge when an older curriculum couldn't possibly give students all they need to be 'successful' (in whatever sense of the word you choose) now and going forward.... I guess this is an obvious point, but it opens a can of worms if you start to consider how on earth to get the balance right and if it is precisely the task of getting this balance that makes online systems, for example, particularly interesting. Again, what I'm thinking about is the give and take that is needed to set the parameters for what is relevant at present and what will be relevant in the future... In this respect, a project that really interests me is Access Space (http://www.access-space.org). This is because participants in the free media lab design their own engagement by getting stuck in and learning what they need as they go, rather than having things suggested to them. And then, as they build their own knowledge, the onus is on them to feed this back to others when relevant. Of course, this is an art-led project, so this example links back to questions about the extent to which this learny/teachy turn is somehow embedded in an art practice/presentation culture. But another element that makes it of interest is that it seems to be forward-looking, in terms of people building their learning experience around what is immediately relevant to them, but the physical tech being used is seldom cutting-edge, as the lab uses all old/recycled computers etc, which gives it a backward-looking element to. What I mean by that is it doesn't place a premium on having the latest technology, it shows the value in existing tools, but rather places a premium instead, on the freedom to share knowledge. -----Original Message----- From: Curating digital art - www.crumbweb.org [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Verina Gfader Sent: 14 May 2010 09:48 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: re-turn Dear all Thank you for the great posts on Educational Turns, and Distributed Social Systems so far. It seems rather difficult and a challenge to lay-out and arrange or 'control' the lines of thought -- as Edgar proposed, there is perhaps a need or claim to create or look for setting up systems that re-frame a current debate, that shift parameters and by doing so unsettle the ways we deal with power structures or models of dominance. ? When suggesting and scripting the current theme of the month and its potential agents, immediately, there was a certain discomfort, a doubt, using terms such the representation of teaching/learning, educational technology, or placing new media outside of curatorial contexts. These terms in themselves are so contested, they are so much at stake in today's talking about art, talking on art. The urgency of addressing particular issues foregrounds certain aspects, and neglects others, puts others in the background, or to the side. But it might be precisely that in this 'overexposed' site where those terms are so evident, certain thoughts or themes persist as obligatory and important. In a way, these dominant thoughts or themes (on the cultural surface) resist erasure by being re-written, un-written and over-written. Thus, they can take new paths and detours - and also bring new by-products, and potentially oppositional, marginal thoughts. The process I engage in here addresses an accumulation of knowledges, and in relation to accumulating knowledge - through making work, writing, performing, through a practice -, one can here perhaps refer to what Irit Rogoff in her text Unbounded describes as a terrain, or territory where "knowledge erupts". She understands this eruption in relation to "knowledges that daily refuse to remain in a contained relation to their origins". There is a proliferation involved where knowledge can only emerge and remain in a transformative state. There are a few, rather hastily notes/questions that I would like to bring up that emerged in response to the proliferating posts. _I was thinking about the issue of what is inherent to learning? Is there not also a thinking about a future, or speculation? If our focus is directed on to these forms of the educational, to what degree are we also proposing to think 'the future'. "Imaginary schools" _Artists working in/practising 'the educational'. If the economy pushes artists to work educationally (referring here to both, questions of income, but also status of research) - in what way does it also shift how we work as artists? _If performing the educational and exhibition contexts, and focusing on the potential of the momentary - Dorothee "...but allows also to react in a temporary situation" - are passive states also desired, of value, possible, and to a certain degree a form of agency? _Is curating a performance? Or an acting out of a constellation, system? _How to provoke? Is this a relevant question? _Maintaining temporary projects? Maria mentioned Deptford.TV, and that "Their short life might be because they die away, or because they become institutionalised as a result of their grass roots success (which entails death..)." Ruth talked about the 3-week artschool and that it's "momentum [is] hard to sustain outside such temporal structures." Complex issues. For now Verina www.crumbweb.org