Welcome to the Art of the MOOC, Merging Public Art and Experimental Education. My name is Pedro Lasch. Socially engaged artists can be extraordinary communicators, educators by training or vocation. Using verious technologies and social forms. Some of the works we will study in this module set out to transform educational institutions from within while others intentionally place themselves outside them as self organized platforms. Whether art is being made or studied is not necessarily relevant. What matters is the production of alternative communities of learning often challenging the hierarchies, professionalization, homogenization and the debt mechanisms of our current education systems. In his book, An Education for Socially Engaged Art, artist and educator Pablo Helguera, addresses the importance of education and the history of pedagogy for these new forms of cultural production. From Pablo Freire very influential practice of the pedagogy of the oppressed to the present day. He also stresses the role of dialogue in recent pedagogical movements, something that is echoed in the social art sphere by what one of its main theorists, Grant Kester has even termed dialogical art, a new form of art practice that is premised on conversation and exchange. But how do we move from the top down lecture format or artist audience relationship to the more horizontal dialogue formats advocated by both Helguera, Kester and so many socially engaged artists who care about education? As head of a country, the late president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez also became the host of his own very long duration weekly TV show. Called Alo Presidente, it included a book club, discussions, conversations, entertainment and more. Much like Oprah show would or the U.S. Hispanic south of Uganda and its usually successful models show CMP and Domingo that ran for several decades before it. Joseph Beuys was famously expelled from his teaching post in Germany when he insisted that everyone can be an artist and all those who wanted could join his course. None of these cases are brought up as positive or negative examples. Simply as clear manifestations of what we will call a radical opening of the roles and function that were considered to be exclusive or closed. In this case the role of the president, the professor, or the artist. There could be many other functions but what matters here is the idea of a radical opening of taking a structure, a figure, a role and opening it so that others can participate, people who had previously been excluded. While some may dismiss these particular efforts as demagogy or paradoxical grandstanding, it is unquestionable that many experiments in radical education and socially engaged pedagogy have stressed the importance of such an opening even if they disagree on the best ways to accomplish it. On a very different side of the spectrum for example are those who did not want to rely on massive gatherings held by patriarchal voices such as that of the president. I am talking about feminist activists, artists and educators around the world in the 1960s and onwards, student movements, etc. These often began to focus their attention on masses of small gatherings and consciousness raising groups. What some later have called activist or cultural cells. WomanHouse, a project from 1972 is a great example of this and influential to this day. It was founded by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro through the Kheil arts feminist art program in Valencia. The house was 17 rooms turned into a big installation, an old Hollywood mansion. Only women came on the first day and over 100 visitors saw the installation. Participants included Faith Wilding and Mira Schor and many other artists who have since become known as key artists of the feminist movement. Waiting. Waiting for someone to come in. Waiting for someone to hold me. Waiting for someone to feed me. Added to these critical approaches have also come those by artists and educators who have embraced new technologies such as this very MOOC to increase access to education but also to increase access to the production of knowledge. Whether what is produced is artistic or not doesn't necessarily matter. This is the first of four programs in which I want to question some of the assumptions usually made about the traditions of European painting. That tradition which was born about 1400, died about 1900. Tonight, it isn't so much the paintings themselves which I want to consider as the way we now see them. Now, in the second half of the 20th century, because we see these paintings as nobody sold them before. John Berger's foundational Ways of Seeing for example was actually started as a TV show for the BBC in 1972. But also some of the earliest online bulletin boards and self organized social media platforms like Rhizome and Nettime were actually founded and run by artists. Last but not least, we have educational theories and experiments that are so radical in nature and so outside of official institutions that while they have no direct connection with art and artists, they end up being embraced or associated with them. Among major examples of these we can find Universidad Tierra lead by Gustavo Esteva in Wahaka. A school committed to reclaiming and regenerating the conditions in which indigenous people traditionally have learned in their own ways. The didactic and political events held by the Sahmat Collective in India are another great example. The Collective was founded in 1989 in response to the murder of political activist, actor, playwright and poet Safdar Hashmi. Their work has been defined in part by their great resistance and stands against the threat of religious fundamentalism and sectarianism. The Caracoles Zapatistas en Chiapas are another fantastic example. But there is also of course the influential ideas elaborated by Ivan Ilich in his book "Deschooling Society" a work from 1971. Now, our guest presenters have themselves been key figures in a number of approaches we have covered here. So we hope you will keep learning from them and also look near you for what you consider to be examples and practices of education that are so powerful that we may consider them a form of social art in their own terms.
