Inquiry and Agency
Something Strange: Creative Pairing Methodologies for Pedagogic Practice
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sarah Cole, Anne Eggebert
Something Strange will reflect on the process and outcomes of three projects involving BA Fine Art students from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, working with local people in King’s Cross. Using a methodology of pairing people to work together, (initially developed by Anna Hart, AIR Studios), and supported by the XD Pathway (Eggebert, Cole and Bannerman), this work has revealed what one participant called ‘the unlikeliness of us’. For the past two years Fine Art degree students have been paired with local elders, trainee construction workers and users of an urban community garden. We have explored what happens when two people, who might not normally meet or get to know each other, discover they have something in common and how they might go about generating art work from this. This paper will reveal some of the results, including videos, readings and images. We will present a critical analysis of the creative processes and outcomes of these projects and reflect on how art practices can be used to explore difference, in age and culture and approaches to making.
Redefining Female Subjectivities in Contemporary Pakistani Art Discourse: Contemporary Pakistani Art Post 9/11
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kanwal Syed
The primary focus of this paper is to explore nuances of agency within the diverse artistic representation of female subjectivities in contemporary Pakistani visual discourse, focusing on artists who are working in response or reaction to the socio-political conditions that emerged in post-War on Terror Pakistan. Drawing on feminist paradigms of women of color, female subjectivity, here, is used as fugitive forms of resistances that challenge hegemonic narratives within dominant structures. This paper analyses the works of selected contemporary Pakistani artists, who negotiated resistance to the colonial gaze and local patriarchal nexus by re-defining gender identity from local perspectives and cultural hybridity though aesthetic possibilities
The Clothesline Project as Social Activism: Creating Awareness about Gender Violence and Its Prevention
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tanice G. Foltz
The Clothesline Project Exhibit is a national project created in 1990 to raise awareness about violence against women. The idea was that women traditionally washed clothes and hung them to dry, often talking with their neighbors about taboo subjects, thus “airing dirty laundry.” I have been coordinating this project at Indiana University Northwest since 2013 where students annually make about 100 t-shirts that represent their resistance to violence. Engaging in visual sociology, photographs of over 400 shirts have been taken, and content analysis was conducted on transcribed messages from the shirts and narratives written on comment cards from shirt creators and exhibit observers. Content analysis of the data has shown that the project serves as a source of heightened awareness about and sensitivity to the prevalence of gender violence among students, and it is a propelling force for those who have not yet dealt with their own traumatic challenges to begin to confront them. Emergent themes from the data include awareness, resistance, resilience, release, and connection with an emphasis on the desire to support others through social activism. This paper will examine the effects of the Clothesline Project from sociological and feminist perspectives, noting that this project preceded, and yet intersects with, the Me Too movement. Results of the Project show an initiation of awareness about gender violence that facilitates campus dialogue and motivates students to become involved in social action.
