This practice research explores material acts of thinking and learning in the art museum, questioning how art objects made specifically for learning can open up a creative and critical space for rich and subjective encounters. These Pedagogical Art Objects emerged through a relationship with two groups of participants engaged in dialogue with artworks at Tate Modern and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia.
Theoretically informed by Charles Garoian’s prosthetic pedagogy, I explore the importance of extending and exceeding habitual approaches to encountering artworks. I critically consider how a material prosthetic pedagogy might precipitate an embodied encounter in the art museum. This more subjective, bodily, and performative way of knowing presents challenges to established institutional knowledge hierarchies. The objects of this practice research introduce a new physical relationship with exhibits through both tangible and intangible touch (Barad., Manning., Springgay). Handling Pedagogical Art Objects in close proximity to exhibits activates differently, introducing a reach-ability; a reach towards new, personalised, and autobiographical encounters, where participants’ intentions provide a conscious projective force through which subjective ontologies connect and enmesh.
Drawing from a phenomenological notion of the ‘maximal grip’ (Merleau-Ponty., Dreyfus), I question if literally holding and gripping objects has the potential to radically alter the way that ideas are metaphorically grasped. This process positions the Pedagogical Art Objects as prosthetics, which have the propensity to form new correspondences through multiple disruptive entanglements. This practice research evidences the significance of agency, modal approaches, speculative acts, and impractical outcomes to a materially orientated pedagogy. Research findings suggest that disobedient, challenging, performative engagements with such objects offer new critical ways of extending the art museum experience. I propose that they create new spaces for more marginalised knowledges and for reciprocal relationships between viewers, bodies, and exhibited artworks to emerge.
Theoretically informed by Charles Garoian’s prosthetic pedagogy, I explore the importance of extending and exceeding habitual approaches to encountering artworks. I critically consider how a material prosthetic pedagogy might precipitate an embodied encounter in the art museum. This more subjective, bodily, and performative way of knowing presents challenges to established institutional knowledge hierarchies. The objects of this practice research introduce a new physical relationship with exhibits through both tangible and intangible touch (Barad., Manning., Springgay). Handling Pedagogical Art Objects in close proximity to exhibits activates differently, introducing a reach-ability; a reach towards new, personalised, and autobiographical encounters, where participants’ intentions provide a conscious projective force through which subjective ontologies connect and enmesh.
Drawing from a phenomenological notion of the ‘maximal grip’ (Merleau-Ponty., Dreyfus), I question if literally holding and gripping objects has the potential to radically alter the way that ideas are metaphorically grasped. This process positions the Pedagogical Art Objects as prosthetics, which have the propensity to form new correspondences through multiple disruptive entanglements. This practice research evidences the significance of agency, modal approaches, speculative acts, and impractical outcomes to a materially orientated pedagogy. Research findings suggest that disobedient, challenging, performative engagements with such objects offer new critical ways of extending the art museum experience. I propose that they create new spaces for more marginalised knowledges and for reciprocal relationships between viewers, bodies, and exhibited artworks to emerge.
