Knowledge and Not-Knowledge Production in the Art School

First, what we define as “knowledge” in an art school inevitably defines where and when we see knowledge production and knowledge acquisition occurring. Because of this, from the institution’s perspective, knowledge is not produced within an art school unless the outcome of a particular sequence of activities or inquiries can be seen as knowledge. At a very high level, we could think about this as the difference between coursework and the conversations unfolding in the hallways after class: one gets recognized for credit, whereas the other is simply a series of social encounters, no matter the level of engagement. Second, to enact this recognition, and thereby produce or acquire knowledge, we have to contend with the current frameworks of legibility that we have at hand. Look at any art school’s areas of study or concentration to see what kinds of knowledge are being valued and produced. Explore any art school prospectus and there will be a common set of knowledges featured, including sculpture, painting, drawing, Western art history, new or digital media, photography, and other things long-ago safely filtered into the canon of Western art production. Officially, these are the only things one learns at an art school. We know these things also readily encode privileges, values, histories, and expectations, and so, when we are forced to map what we make and what we do at an art school onto them, we embed those same limitations into the knowledge that we’re producing or acquiring. Art schools, and post-secondary institutions generally, develop policy, embark on strategic planning, and set up more and more offices, centres, and departments to supplement or counteract a core operating logic that revolves around racial, gender, and economic privilege. Third, we need to keep in mind that the institution itself has those same limitations, edges, and boundaries embedded within it. This is important to keep in mind, as we know that some activities get to count officially as what we learn at an art school and all other activities are seen as just things that happen. However, when an art school considers certain experiences within an academic institution to be inconsequential to the educational experience itself, it inevitably privileges an impossibly smooth, efficient, and colonial set of experiences as the base requirements for producing and acquiring knowledge. In this view, an art school considers only those experiences that neatly scaffold onto those base requirements as pertinent knowledge. In this context, all the other experiences that occur, and especially those that are disproportionally experienced by racialized and marginalized students, are not only not seen as knowledge by the institution but become the raw material of infinitely increasing bureaucracy. Art schools, and post-secondary institutions generally, develop policy, embark on strategic planning, and set up more and more offices, centres, and departments to supplement or counteract a core operating logic that revolves around racial, gender, and economic privilege. In this way, the experiences that are institutionally considered to be not-knowledge, insofar as they are not core parts of any curriculum or at the foundation of institutional operations, are rarely formally or universally brought into the educational experience or classroom and are instead seen mostly through administrative structures. To understand this more fully, we might consider the possibilities of exploring not just what gets to count as knowledge in an art school, but how transformative it could be to bring meaningful experiences to the centre of what can be learned in an art school. For example, what if initiating a public conversation with a faculty member when they ignore the rich and broad practices of artists of colour in their lectures counted as knowledge in an art school? What if caring for a fellow student in a moment of crisis counted as knowledge in an art school? What if the practice of political action against exertions of power counted as knowledge in an art school? What if experiencing the Indigenous territory on which you learn through your whole body counted as knowledge in an art school? What if a campaign advocating for financial transparency from administration counted as knowledge in an art school? What if cooking for others who don’t have the time or money to access the food they need counted as knowledge in an art school? What if working to change the biases built into the admissions process counted as knowledge at an art school? What if forms of political and aesthetic discourse that do not necessarily map onto the dominant discourses of the last sixty-five years of politics and aesthetics counted as knowledge in an art school? What if demanding the end of sexual violence across campus counted as knowledge in an art school? What if insisting on the right to self-determination as an Indigenous artist counted as knowledge in an art school? What if working around mindlessly designed able-bodied spaces because your own body moves differently counted as knowledge in an art school? What if learning to balance part-time work and full-time debt counted as knowledge in an art school? What if navigating oppressive structures of evaluation that empower the most privileged counted as knowledge in an art school? What if the decision to drop out of art school counted as knowledge in an art school? Beyond simply expanding what gets to “count” as knowledge, this sort of audit enables a larger set of possibilities. This is an effort to delineate the frontlines of a future of art practice and cultural life on terms that are just and equitable for everyone. To be sure, there are well-established positions from which we can develop this vital work. We might draw from Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s notion of “study”Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Brooklyn, NY: Minor Compositions-Autonomedia, 2013), 81, 109 — 110. .to better understand what actually happens at (an art) school and call that knowledge. We could build more complex understandings of the roles that artists will be asked to play upon graduation and call that knowledge for a post-art school life. We could start classes later in the day and call that embodied knowledge.Amy X. Wang, « New Research Says Starting University Classes at 11 am or Later Would Improve Learning », Quartz, 13 avril 2017,.We can stop insisting that we’re trying to produce “professional artists” and call that political knowledge.BFAMFAPhD, “Artists Report Back: A National Study on the Lives of Arts Graduates and Working Artists.” BFAMFAPhD, 2014. We could heed the call of Sara Ahmed to “support those who are not supported”Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 1.and see that act of solidarity as knowledge. We might work together in ways that are meaningful to us, rather than meaningful to the efforts to sustain the market logicsNato Thompson, Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991 — 2011 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 20 — 32. 20-32.that enclose many of the educational experiences in art school and call that professional knowledge. We could, at the very least, enact the propositions put forward by Sara Florence Davidson and her father, Robert Davidson, and make relationships and curiosity the centre of learningSara Florence Davidson and Robert Davidson, Potlatch as Pedagogy: Learning Through Ceremony (Winnipeg: Portage & Main Press, 2018), 69 — 70. 69-70.and call that school. In this version of art school, we find a knowledge that continually grapples with the unending capacity for institutional power to envelop systemic violence with glacial policy shifts and confounding administrative procedures. And yet even if we were to embrace all of these starting points, it wouldn’t be enough. The kinds of things that countless students, faculty, and staff have to do just to survive in an art school would still be not-knowledge at the art school. They would still be the things that occur every day in and around every class, every critique, every exhibition, and yet would still not be officially seen as curriculum or knowledge. These acts of survival are not unlike Gregory Sholette’s notion of the “dark matter” of the art world.Gregory Sholette, Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture (London: Pluto Press, 2011), 44. 44.. These acts are the invisible labour and infrastructure that hold up the dominant processes and hegemonic practices underwriting contemporary art education. They are the site of “common” in an oppressive common sense. By their nature of exception from the rule of institutional logics, they are registered through a constellation of policy-driven concerns and liabilities, rather than seen as what they truly are — the intersectional forms of labour and acts of care that actually bring the art school into being, day in and day out. With this, we could build an art school that not only recognizes (and not just supports) but centres these forms of labour and pluralities of experience as sites of knowledge that are both compulsory (as they will always be without monumental institutional reform) and exceptional (in their ability to meaningfully exceed the art school). In this version of art school, we find a knowledge that continually grapples with the unending capacity for institutional power to envelop systemic violence with glacial policy shifts and confounding administrative procedures. In this grappling, we produce knowledge through an encounter with power and then circulate it through our communities, sharing new ways to push back. When an art school finally sees these practices as catalysts for important and urgent knowledge, it becomes something that truly prepares its communities for the complexities that they will encounter, enact, enable, and resist for the rest of their lives, as artists, or otherwise. Knowledge produced through these acts of resistance is not just for contemporary art (though it is valuable there) but for much larger social change. What was once not-knowledge in an art school becomes know-how for emancipatory social action. To that end, the value of the art school is in the opportunities it affords to model meaningful, unexpected, surprising, and more-just ways to be in the world together. Its mission should be built around the ambition to conjure other futures and practise them at a moment-by-moment basis. An art school is an opportunity to see and value knowledge in the experiences that so many other institutions have failed to bring into the centre — the complex, intersectional, and difficult things that make up everyday life — and build new imaginations together. Justin Langlois

Knowledge and Not-Knowledge Production in the Art School

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