Provocative pedagogies

Jake Watts

Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland  

 

M.V.S.E: Workshops as Performative Environments for Artistic Learning

Motor Vehicle Sundown (Event) (M.V.S.E) is a workshop model adapted from George Brecht’s 1960 ‘event score’ of the same name. Initially commissioned by Many Studios in Glasgow (2016) M.V.S.E has been further playtested at the Icelandic Academy of the Arts (2016). Influenced by the ludic approach of Fluxus practices, the M.V.S.E workshop encourages participants to work in groups and engage in critical play by using performance instructions (distributed through a system of cards and dice) as material from which to collectively notate a score. Groups then perform their scores in a vehicle at a communally agreed location during sundown. 

 

For Provocative Pedagogies: Performative Teaching and Learning, I will reflect on how the M.V.S.E workshop negotiates performative processes of extended (Clark & Chalmers, 1998; Rupert, 2009;), distributed (Malfouris, 2013), and embodied (Noland, 2009) cognition. This approach will outline how workshops are paragogical (Corneli & Dandoff, 2012) environments for collectively learning and producing knowledge. I will focus on how workshops can deploy the performativity of play as a critical means to metacognitively (Schoenfeld, 1987) consider and adapt our own learning practices, and through this process address how and what we might learn from one another. 

 

Clark, A. and Chalmers, D. (1998). The Extended Mind. Analysis, 58(1), pp.7-19.

Corneli, J. and Danoff, C. (2012). Paragogy. Winnetka, IL: Pub Dom Ed Press.

Malfouris, L. (2013). How things shape the mind: A theory of material engagement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Noland, C. (2009) Agency & Embodiment: Performing Gestures/Producing Culture. Cambridge, MA: Havard University Press.

Rupert, R. (2009) Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Schoenfeld, A. H. (1987). What’s all the fuss about metacognition? In A. H. Schoenfeld (Ed.), Cognitive science and mathematics education (pp. 189-215). Hilldale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.