Event overview
Juuso Tervo and Dennis Atkinson will respond to the Centre for Arts and Learning theme of Known and Unknown in relation to their research.
Juuso Tervo
In this brief presentation Juuso will draw from his recent studies on historical research in art education to address how art educators have tackled the relationship between the known and the unknown. What makes historical research an interesting context for such inquiry is that historical research is often understood to entail an interplay between sameness and difference, or between the know and the unknown. Whether the knowledge of the past is seen to prevent the past’s repetition (as Santayana had it) or to put the present in a different light, historical research “makes history” (as Michel de Certeau had it) by fusing the known with the unknown – and more than often in the name of a better future. This, in turn, frames historians as masters of difference who can harness the powers of the unknown in the production of a particular kind of history: one that connects the past, the present, and the future into a process we can understand, affect, and embody.
Starting from a premise that we might not know what history is and what it does, I offer some preliminary remarks for an “unmasterful” (à la Julietta Singh) approach to art education history – an approach that hopefully keeps history in question.
Known and Unknown: The sphinx of the work to-be-made
Dennis Atkinson
In responding to the theme of known and unknown this brief presentation will begin with Etienne Souriau’s notions of a ‘work to-be-made’ and his concept of instauration. It will consider art practice, pedagogic practice and education as works to be made which involve aporetic relations of known and unknown or between knowledge and knowing/doing, relations characterised by Souriau’s notion of the sphinx of the work.
Then the presentation will consider Felix Guattari’s comments on art and the institution. It will consider the art of pedagogy as that which is concerned with negotiating a tension between the known and the unknown. This brings to the fore the notions of inter-dependence and response-ability from Donna Haraway. This contrasts the current intoxication with knowledge, measurement and control in educational policy with a view of education ‘on the horizon line’, a mutable process involving speculation and the particularities of sympoiesis (working-with). This contrast is developed further by considering the tensions between institutional aestheticisation and local processes of aesthesis and wonders if we require a new aesthetic paradigm in education. It concludes with some thoughts regarding the importance of speculation, pedagogical jurisprudence and cosmopedagogy.
Juuso Tervo is Assistant Professor in Arts-Based Research and Pedagogy at the Department of Art and Media at Aalto University, Finland.
Dennis Atkinson is Professor Emeritus, Goldsmiths University of London, Department of Educational Studies and the Centre for the Arts and Learning. He is a visiting professor at the Universities of Porto, Gothenburg and Barcelona.
Information about Centre for Arts and Learning
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 18 Jun 2025 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm |
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