Art & Education
When information is applied we get knowledge, and when knowledge is applied we get education. Education takes place when information impacts on a human being and ruptures an established way of seeing, thereby producing insights that challenge, move and/or inspire transformation.
In today’s world, it is commonly acknowledged that art can be utilised as a tool to impart knowledge that is over and beyond itself. Art in education no longer means the learning of aesthetic appreciations, applications or techniques, but rather, the acquisition of a new non-art related skill, an appreciation of a brand new perspective to an old situation, an insight into another world.
Because of the intrinsic nature of art as a Socratic “what-if”, it serves as a perfect medium for the transmittance of messages, ideas, campaigns and beliefs. That is why non-governmental organizations, schools of thought, state agencies and religious institutions have all been known to adopt artistic presentations to present their ideas - and to win new converts to their causes. Yet, as a result, art can sometimes be viewed as a menace or threat by those who recognize its power to move, indoctrinate, incite and question.
Within Singapore, performance art and forum theatre - which were purportedly dangerous for their immediacy and direct engagement with social issues - were once proscribed and denied state funding. Yet today, these art forms are supported by government agencies as a means to promote their individual agendas. It is a clear volte-face of the previous policy, but also one that recognises and celebrates the ability of art as a means to achieve the objective of education and engage.
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Education takes place when one is not distracted by the vehicle on which it arrives. WE need to have the wisdom, political will and discernment to engage with the object of education, and how this idea is being transmitted across media, culture, language, people, bureaucracy, wealth, national pride and ethnocentric viewpoints. This endeavour itself is part of education. Today, it is quite a challenge to be educated - and that challenge presents myriad exciting possibilities for artists as well.
Because to educate involves active engagement and discourse. Art cannot come as a decree from above; it cannot be preached by practitioners who view themselves as privileged ones with the key to absolute knowledge and comprehension. Art cannot be righteous if it is meant to reach out, touch someone and change his or her viewpoint. Artists themselves therefore need to be challenged, their art needs to be dissected and probed and in the process, transformed into new ideas and works.
Yet therein lies the question: in these contemporary times where some artists have begun enjoying celebrity status, are artists and their works glorified commodities today, such that they are seen as ends in themselves? Are their purported exhortations of “truth” and “beauty” foisted upon the audiences in a top-down approach? As art become estranged from the world it claims to bring a fresh perspective to? Does art even have the meaning it insists on possessing? Do art and its facilitators need to be educated themselves, to be more aware of their audiences?
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Art likes to imagine that it possesses new insights which it has distilled into one moment, one element or one form. However it is not uncommon to see unrestrained abandonment in artistic practices - where art seeks to demonstrate its freedom from the confines of societal mores and restrictions but does not educate in any other way. Is art successfully reflexive when it critiques and defies a canonical stand?
While art seeks to be liberated from narrow definitions, it should also accommodate these same dominating definitions that have been adopted in the past. This is imperative as the sparring of the new and old can surely rejuvenate the latter, inspiring new strands instead of obliterating them. After all, cross-genres, cross-disciplines, cross-cultures and cross-pollenations are all about education and widening the scope of artistic phenomena.
Just as much as we seek to create new, cutting edge works reflecting various alternative viewpoints, we need to recognise that there are other sections of the art ecology that thrive on tried-and-tested formales and familiar well-worn names and pieces. Do these audiences not need and deserve their art as much as we do? Should we not be celebrating this diversity of offerings available to the public? At the very least, these commercial or bourgeois works - whatever they may be termed - make no pretences about their raisons d’etre and intended messages. Audiences understand these works because they are lucid, not because they are bland.
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In trying to educate audiences, should art litter signs and signifies to guide them - at the risk of being overly blatant? Or should art refrain from them altogether, hence becoming totally obtuse? Some contemporary art works can be highly coded and/or formalistic, making them opaque, non-communicative and often alienating. How much should artists assume audiences already know and similarly how much should audiences expect of artists and their work? How self-reflexive and accommodating is art towards being educated itself?
Hence the challenge for artists and audiences alike - how do we engage in a constantly rejuvenating discourse with one another, to ensure that all parties educate each other about their desires, needs, expectations, and responses? Should there be more attention paced on research and develop, not only for artistic experimentation and exploration, but also on artistic engagement and communication?
emphasis mine. J.L.
