Last year Hannah & I were artists-in-residents in 4 different public schools in Toronto, as part of a larger research-creation project called The Pedagogical Impulse.

The Pedagogical Impulse aimed to respond to “the gap between cur­rent artist-teacher mod­els and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of ped­a­gogy as form in con­tem­po­rary art.” A series of artist-residencies in K-12 schools were curated in order to exam­ine the ways that social prac­tice art in the class­room enlarges under­stand­ings of col­lab­o­ra­tion, de-centres artis­tic exper­tise, responds to con­text, and con­cep­tu­al­izes “the class­room as art.”

We worked with one grade six classroom on a project called “Your Lupines or your Life”

Another grade six classroom on a project called “Ask Me Chocolates”

And a grade three and grade six classroom on a joint project called “Upside Down and Backwards”

Additionally, we are currently completing The Liv­ing Archive, a series of inter­views about art, ped­a­gogy and know­ing. Based on our res­i­den­cies in schools, Han­nah and I selected six artists/curators/educators whose prac­tices served as a point of ref­er­ence dur­ing our res­i­dency activ­i­ties. Through these con­ver­sa­tions, we seek to expand the dia­logue around arts prac­tices with young peo­ple and edu­ca­tion broadly defined.

Interview with Pablo Helguera here

And an interview with artist group Whoop Dee Doo here

There’s lots of information on each of these projects on The Pedagogical Impulse website.

Photograph from my mother’s 60th birthday party, courtesy of Rachel Pick photography.

Our work in Toronto District Schools, through The Pedagogical Impulse has wrapped up for the year, and Hannah and I are currently sifting through all of the material that we generated in collaboration with students and teachers over the past 6 months. Look for project updates & publications on The Pedagogical Impulse, soon!

Hannah & I are really excited to be participating in this show at the Gladstone Hotel, curated by Sholem Krishtalka.
THAT’S SO GAY 2012: GIRLS WHO ARE BOYS WHO DO BOYS LIKE THEY’RE GIRLS
3rd and 4th floor Galleries
June 6-July 29 – Exhibition hours daily 12-5pm
Opening Reception June 28, 7pm-10pm

Featuring work by:
Steven Beckly, Sol Legaults, Cecilia Berkovic, Johnny Forever, Hannah Jickling & Helen Reed, Kyle Lasky,Elisha Lim, Mikiki, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, LJ Roberts, Andrew Zealley.

Hannah Jickling, Stephanie Springgay and I presented at the Open Engagement conference in Portland, Oregon. We were on a panel entitled “Alternative Schooling” moderated by Grace Hwang, where we discussed the Ask Me Chocolates project currently in development with a TDSB elementary school.

Later in the weekend we lead a workshop on constellational curriculum.

An Ask Me Chocolate designed by a student at “Multiple Elementary” inspired by Wim Delvoye’s Cloaca.

Sarah Todd has written an article on the Cinenova/Power Plant/AGYU/FAG All Hands on the Archive collaboration called An over attachment or excessive engagement that goes beyond the intellectual. She talks about fan culture & feminism. You can read it on The Power Plant website – here.

Hannah and I will be in residence at the Nida Artist Colony in Lithuania for November & December to work on our queer ecology project – The Beaver Mat & The Fagot Shack.

As part of Cinenova: All Hands on the Archive, a collaboration between the Feminist Art Gallery, the AGYU, and the Powerplant, Hannah & I will be presenting Veronica 4 Rose, a 1983 documentary by Melanie Chait.

“Produced for the then newly launched Channel 4, Veronica 4 Rose is one of the key early documentaries that the channel helped to produce. The film’s broadcast in January 1983 was a milestone in the discussion of homosexuality on British TV. The film consists of interviews, conversations and discussions with young lesbians from Newcastle, Liverpool and London who talk about their lives and in particular the challenges of coming out in Britain in the late 1970s and 80s. Communication is the key subject of the film, which involves its participant in discussions about how they are represented and what they feel is important or interesting about their own experiences. Rather than a series of ‘talking heads’ the film presents the women through various forms of address to the camera and in exchanges with each other, from talking in smaller groups or with their lovers, to reading selections of each other’s testimonies and conversations about how best to present themselves (which one participant discusses as she customises her leather jacket).”

- George Clark, Cinenova: Reproductive Labor, Afterall Online

http://www.afterall.org/online/cinenova

This film was selected from the Cinenova film archive. Cinenova is a non-profit womens’ film/video distributor based in London, UK. Cinenova is a source of very specific knowledge, a network and cultural community that engages directly with feminist film and video practice, and with the question of how to make this knowledge more publicly accessible

All Hands on the Archive activates and animates the Cinenova collection here in Toronto.

Veronica 4 Rose screens at 3pm.

come earlier (1pm) and catch a film selected by filmmaker Michèle Pearson Clarke!

We’re back in Toronto, and it feels great!

Currently we’re working with Dr. Stephanie Springgay at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto on Stephanie’s SSHRCC-funded research project entitled The Pedagogical Impulse.

“The Pedagogical Impulse is a platform for research-creation concerned with contemporary art’s paradigmatic re-orientation towards the educational. The project will orient itself around a series of artist residencies that will take place across a number of educational sites (K-12 classrooms, teacher education programs, graduate programs, and community spaces) in order to examine how artists are engaging with educational concepts as spaces for the development of new critical practices, and the potential transformative engagements that occur when such art practices are located in schools…”

We have been meeting with some really exciting schools (& teachers), and are looking forward to the coming months of our residency.

Also, our dear friend Hazel Meyer is working with us on this project. Check out her inspirational aesthetics (& athletics) here.