ECHOES FROM THE DARK FOREST – Affect in learning of
contemporary art and (in) ecology of subjectivity

In my research I ask, 1.) How does the affective learning space emerge in the encountering of
contemporary art ?  The question is
about the journey to the workshop of contemporary art, time in the workshop and
time afterwords. More precisely, how is the affective-material condition in the
pedagogical space in which I refer to embodied ja material movement in the
learning activity. What happens in-between “the official learning”, in the
shadows of it ?

2.) How
does the workshop become possible to lead and what kind of affective-material
space and ecology of subjectivity becomes possible ? How to approach
subjectivity as an ecology and now I refer to posthuman, new-material discussion.
Here the focus is in wider horizont in which art education works in biosphere,
nonhuman perspective. Matter is active. How does the contemporary art organize
here ?

The reasoning for these research questions are at
least from three different fields. First, the pedagogy of contemporary art and
artistic production with it. How does contemporary art forms and reforms
learning activity in the area of Basic Art Education (but as well in secondary
and high school, college)? What can be the new that contemporary art can offer
?

The other field opens up from the affect theory
and an affective encountering, experience. The infamous school shootings in
Kauhajoki 2008 was definetly directing my reseach questions towards aggression,
fear and anxiety and to the connection these can have with art educational
field. This connection is affective for sure.

Thirdly, my research questions connects also to
the discussion and theorization of the control society. This can be seen in all
assessments and self-control mechanism and calculations in our society today.
Also the limits between private and public has been blurred.

My research can be described as art-based and
nomadic. I start from the context of experiential learning and the didactic
procedure of it but end up been lost in the brushwood, desert after which I
start sensitively listening with my whole body the workshop I study.
Bewilderment, disturbance, anxiety will change its course. I want to preserve
the territory of experiential learning as a map and potential route, but also I
want to challenge it with the sketch of “affective pedagogy”. My theoretical
framework comes from pragmatism, poststructuralism, affect theory and wider
posthuman discussion.

 The
research workshop was accomplished in winter-spring time 2012 at the Kauhajoki
Art School for Children and Young People. First I took the students out in the
dark forest just to wonder it, silently, in the dark. After this they painted
an exhibition to this forest. The exhibition was constructed also in the dark.
We also did some photography, installation art with some experiments with
performance art. These happened in the classroom, at the corridors and on the
streets and in side a local night club.

In the history of contemporary art there seems to
be a clear tendency to move away from the painted canvas to the invervention of
the real space and further to the performativity and dialogue. The space and
object has become  a rhizomatically
connected to each other temporarily. The clearest exemple is performance art,
art is transforming us into something unknown.

This research emphasizes practical participation
to our own material production of subjectivity. Contemporary art is exactly
this kind of production of subjectivity. Here the term subjectivity refers to
minority whereas massmedia is mainly producing subjectivity of majority. Subjectivity
can also be approached as an ecology. This refers to the temporary connections
within materiality and discursiveness of the environment.

I have searched these kinds of encounterings in
my research material. Silence is very affective “method” in this context as
well as experimentality as well as experientiality. Contemporary art is an
ethico-aesthetic practice, it is affirming us. It asks: What can we become? It
challenges the normalizing habits, routines and performs becoming-other. These
kind of transformational events are also counter-attacks to the
control-intensive tendency and global threats in our times.