From Distant Horizon to the ‘Uncoercive Rearrangement of Desire’: Institutional Pedagogy and Collaborative Learning in an Instance of Arts and Curatorial Education

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Faramelli, Anthony and Graham, Janna. 2020. From Distant Horizon to the ‘Uncoercive Rearrangement of Desire’: Institutional Pedagogy and Collaborative Learning in an Instance of Arts and Curatorial Education. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 39(4), pp. 841-854. ISSN 1476-8062 [Article]

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12327

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In politics and philosophy, the question of horizons, the vanishing point that is always out of reach, but provides direction and guidance, underpins utopic thinking. This is a strange phenomenon since, as Jodi Dean suggests, horizons are ‘real’ insofar as they exist both spatially and temporally. Dean invokes the Lacanian concept of the real to demonstrate how horizons are omnipresent, even when we are unable to see them. Here, we disagree with Dean. Rather than view them as a fixed and constant entity, with Deleuze & Guattari we agree that horizons, understood as spaces of possibility, must be constructed through communal enunciations of desire. Following Dean's (re)formulation of horizons alongside of Deleuze & Guattari's concept of desire, we propose that Foucault's idea of ‘heterotopia’, a real, but inverted and potentially uncomfortable counter-site, is a better schema for thinking the possibilities of arts education's horizon. This article thinks through the construction of other, emancipated, spaces of learning in arts education through the methodological approach of institutional analysis and the work done by the Institutional Pedagogy movement in post-war France. Drawing from this movement, the work of Fernand Oury and Aïda Vasquez and Félix Guattari, ‘institution’ here is understood loosely as anything that institutes forms of sociability. As such, institutional analysis seeks to radically transform institutions from within and without by creating spaces to facilitate the reconfiguration of desire. Our analysis will be grounded in our own pedagogical practices in universities where we have made use of the techniques of Institutional Pedagogy.

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https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12327