In the overview
The project considers the dimension of aesthetic education in two ways: on the one hand, education at art colleges and in art classes is based on aesthetic practices; thus she cannot do without the structures of the aesthetic. On the other hand, contemporary art often uses didactic and pedagogical models and thus creates its own educational situations. This results in two research fields:
Research field 1 (Silvia Henke): Aesthetics of Education
Based on Schiller’s concept of aesthetic education, which reappears in recent art theories, the project will examine didactic figures (parable, model, Lehrstück, example) that are equally relevant to aesthetics and education. In the following, through micropractical investigations, moments of aesthetic education in the classroom as well as in artistic work will be concretely described and new situations for the interweaving of theory and practice will be created. The aim is also to expand the concept of practice and at the same time to make it more concrete.
Research Field 2 (Wiktoria Furrer): Radical Pedagogies in Art (phd)
The research field focuses on artistic practices that work with the help of pedagogical models and participatory formats such as workshops, platforms, laboratories, collaborations, temporary schools and artist-run institutions. As performative, process-oriented, dialogical or investigative settings with their own micro-practices and methods such as Oskar Hansen’s “Visual Games” or “The Silent University Principles and Demands” by Ahmet Ögüt, their core lies in the work on spaces of experience and forms of knowledge. Radical pedagogies, according to the thesis, develop an aesthetic thinking that extends to an aesthetics of existence by combining aesthetic and social processes.
Both projects contribute to the contouring of the practice and micro-practice of aesthetic thinking, which can be used for art education at art colleges, secondary schools as well as for non-institutional educational and mediation contexts. The entire project is closely linked to the sub-projects of the other universities, which work together in regular conferences, meetings and workshops. The results of the project should result in concrete impulses and further initiatives for aesthetic thinking at art schools.
