Kangan Arora – Page 2

Vilhauer: Understanding Art

Having returned to Monica Vilhauer’s “Understanding Art: The Play of Work and Spectator” after a few months since I initially read it back in February, it revealed it’s true meaning in language that I found much more palatable than the first time I’d read it. The text was much easier to understand after immersing myself in all the various discussions and readings for the PG Cert over the last few months, and building a wider picture where this understanding fits in. My first experience, back in February was difficult to say the least, when I found the language very academic and heavy.

One of the takeaways from this experience is to persevere with these academic texts, but also build on further reference points and discussions that help in that understanding. One size doesn’t fit all. We had an interesting discussion around ‘over-intellectualism’ and ‘anti-intellectualism’ in the session around ‘love and care’ which resonates here. I believe that there is a place for intellectualism but on the ground, this doesn’t always work where one must be able to articulate and explain ideas and concepts in a way that they are understood by the participant (or student).

As Vilhauer points out, “Because the back and forth movement is so essential to play, we can see that play itself cannot be a solitary event.” (pg33)

With the above in mind, reading the text could not exist as a solitary event and in order to be understood, the reader (me, in this case) had to immerse and experience the teaching and the context. Through reflecting on lived experiences and discussion with my peers, a shared understanding was reached. This interaction and subsequent understanding, I believe can be applied to our context as teachers and we should look to actively embrace and embed it in our teaching and make ‘learning’ the most important aspect of our teaching. Teaching is not about imparting knowledge, but creating an understanding of the knowledge through ‘active’ participation from the students.

Gadamar maintains that “the work of art has its true being in the fact that it becomes an experience that changes the person who experiences it” (TM, 102)

This transformational experience is key in the back and forth of teaching and learning. Gadamer also emphasizes on the importance of the effort and commitment required by the participant. The act of understanding comes with this engagement and want to participate. It also fosters a sense of belonging.

Franz Erhard Walther, ‘Shifting Perspectives’, 2020, installation view. Courtesy: Haus der Kunst, Munich, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; photograph: Maximilian Geuter

Gadamer’s interpretation of ‘Play’ also reminds me of the work of Franz Erhard Walther, a German artist who explores ‘action as art’ and invites the audience to become an active participant in his fabric sculptures.

When Kolja Reichert (2014) describes Erhard’s show The Body Decides, he writes “Werksatz were laid out like stock in a textiles factory awaiting inventory, like equipment in a school sports hall, like tents after camp has been struck or like the elements of an installation before the artist had come to arrange them. In fact, the elements were waiting for the viewer to turn them into artworks through use: waiting for someone to slip into Objekt zum Hineinlegen (Object To Lie Down, 1964) or for a couple of people to place the very long hood for two, Sehkanal (Sight Channel, 1968), over their heads. When in use, they take on ‘Handlungsform’ (action form), joining with the user to form ‘Werkfiguren’ (work figures). Subsequently, they return to their ‘Lagerform’ (storage form), the state in which they are displayed. But even here they await activation, now in the imagination of the viewer, as ‘Werkvorstellung’ (the work’s idea).”

Although this could be classed as ‘performance art’, giving the audience agency and making them more than mere spectators fully embraces Gadamer’s principles of ‘play’ to reach their own versions of understanding. This direct connection with the materials and techniques, the ‘doing’ can be seen as essential for the understanding of process and ideas, in a hands on design degree like textiles or jewellery design.

Franz Erhard Walther: It Jumps out of time: Tate Online

Another artist who comes to mind is Dayanita Singh, an Indian photographer who’s primary format is the book. Frustrated by the fossilisation of her works in a museum setting, Singh creates ‘pocket museums’ or ‘Museum Bhavans‘ which she or visitors can endlessly edit, sequence, archive or display. Through this possibility, Singh allows audiences to immersive themselves in the work and build their own narratives from her photographs.

Bibliography:

Vilhauer, M (2010) ‘Understanding Art: The Play of Work and Spectator’

Reichert, K (2014) ‘Franz Erhard Walther Wants to Change The Way We Interact‘ Frieze [Online] (Accessed: 23 May 2021)

Tate. Franz Erhard Walther: It Jumps out of time [Online] (Accessed: 23 May 2021)

Jobey, L (2019) ‘Thinking outside the book‘ Financial Times. (Accessed: 24 May 2021)

Singh, D (2015) ‘Building Museum Bhavan‘ [Online] (Accessed: 24 May 2021)

Meeting new peers, new ways of learning

Slides from my introductions presentation:
I introduced both my teaching and professional practice to my peers,
these are my collaborations with IKEA (left) and Floor_Story (right).

We introduced ourselves to our ‘tutor group’ almost a whole month ago and although it feels like I’m reflecting on it after a long period, these are a few things that stayed with me that I’ve been thinking about.

Perhaps the first was the surprise at how nervous I felt introducing myself to my peers. I was well and truly back in the shoes of being a student, my voice wavering, my palms sweaty. And I wasn’t even in the same room, I was presenting to a computer screen, I had done run sessions with dozens of students in the past so why was I so nervous? Suddenly all the conversations I was having with my own students who are currently suffering from anxiety and lack of confidence to present to a group, were applicable to me and I found myself trying to listen to my own advice! Be prepared, practice beforehand, have notes to prompt you etc.

Nerves aside, I introduced my professional and academic practice with the group. My role at CSM in the large part involves teaching and pastoral care for Year 1 Textile and Jewellery Design students. Some of the other initiatives I’ve undertaken are community building, developing online pedagogy (through my involvement with the Dean’s Online Learning Group who’ve met once a month since the start of the pandemic) and Decolonising the curriculum.

Speakers from Left: Sandra Poulson, Caroline Broadhead, Priya Khanchandani, Fernando Laposse

I work closely with the Programme Director to organise various events and opportunities to discuss ‘race’ and ‘decoloniality’ for the staff team as well as for students in a non-hierarchical way. One of the events was a series of Programme wide talks called Material Bias for the Jewellery, Textiles, Material Futures and Biodesign students. These can be watched here.

I also shared a resource I found particularly useful to understand what Decolonising means in the context of Design. Anoushka Khandwala’s ‘What does it mean to Decolonise Design?’ clarifies our understanding of terms like ‘diversity’ and ‘decolonising’, which are often wrongly substituted for one another. Khandwala also provides a good reading list to understand Decolonising further.

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My colleague Ocean’s presentation stayed with me, she described her teaching practice as ‘gentle’, much like herself. She explained her practice so eloquently, I found myself wanting to be her student for the really interesting themes she spoke about, but more for the manner in which she presented them. In the past I have always thought that bringing ‘energy’ to the classroom is one of the most important factors, getting students engaged through sheer energetic enthusiasm. After this session, I realised that quietness and compassion, pace and tone are equally important. Especially as we teach through this pandemic, I feel like a certain measure of gentleness and empathy are hugely important attributes that everyone needs in their teaching toolkit, I certainly will be more aware and bring them into my own practice as only enthusiasm will not be enough.

UPDATE: Read more about this on a separate blogpost where I discuss love, empathy and charisma and if they’re important in a teaching practice?

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I’m really enjoying some of the teaching methodologies that my tutors are using to deliver the course. The pre-reading tasks bring focus to the discussions in the breakout groups and help to ease the awkwardness of meeting new peers online. The tutors facilitate the sessions expertly by giving specific instructions of what to discuss based on the readings, so even if you have previous knowledge the tasks are specifically about texts that have been sent to all of us, so that’s a bit of a leveller.

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Kala Bhavan Campus, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India 2017. Photo: Grant Watson

Something we have discussed from day 1 is how urgent it is to decolonise the curriculum and bringing in more diverse opinions. So why are all the texts that we have been sent so far from a white / western perspective? I know it’s early days but I have found myself wondering what were the teaching philosophies of Tagore’s Kala Bhavan at Santiniketan? Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian poet, educator, painter and mathematician who founded an experimental and progressive school, Santiniketan in 1901. The art school, Kala Bhavan was founded in 1919, ‘born out of the need to rehabilitate Indian culture after the demoralising impact of British rule.’ (A.Dasgupta, Life at Santiniketan) Sounds like Tagore was a century ahead of all the conversations we are currently having about decolonising education. Shouldn’t we be reading about more diverse academic practices from around the world? Is this something we will only address in the Inclusive teaching and learning elective? Hopefully not.

UPDATE: I guess this is where Intersectionality and Decoloniality come in. Whilst I accept the texts shared with us have been diverse from the point of view of including non-white perspectives, they have still mostly been through the ‘western’ lens. I appreciate we are in a British HE system and hence, they are relevant in this case. However, as we pride ourselves to be truly an international university, further barriers need to be broken down. I am a non-white POC, but I also come from a post colonial country where the system of education greatly differs from the west. I believe we have much to learn from one another.

Language

Victoria Odeniyi‘s lecture about ‘Reimagining Conversations with Multilingual Students‘ asked many relevant questions that are being raised on a day- to-day basis within our teaching team since we made the transition to online and blended teaching. Our reliance on language, especially written English to communicate with the students through email, Moodle, Blackboard chat, etc is more than ever, without the presence of face to face interactions.

It’s important to take the right tone as intention can sometimes be misconstrued through the written language. I, for one was used to writing very to-the-point, straight forward emails that could come across as a little unfriendly. I’m learning to be more encouraging through words.

The feedback on online learning has been mixed from students but there is no doubt that the majority of them feel like their written English is improving because they are having to explain their intentions more, in crits as well as classroom interactions. I have found that as ‘chat’ is the default way of peer to peer communication in their personal lives (through WhatsApp, instagram comments etc) students feel comfortable using this feature in Blackboard sessions. We encourage them to use the emoji buttons at the start of a session to share how they are feeling and many more engage using this simple tool. This sets a more informal atmosphere but I think it’s important for relatability and fostering belonging.

The importance of ‘silence‘ in a virtual environment is also not to be underestimated, something we discussed in breakout groups during Victoria’s lecture, but something that has become more and more relevant to my experience of online teaching. Everyone needs time to process information, whether that’s before or during a lecture, to respond to questions or construct questions after a session. This was recently discussed in a ISECoP meeting called ‘Explore the Silence’, which sadly I couldn’t attend, but I did explore the resources on Padlet later on.

Whenever I think of language, I’m reminded of an excellent example of pedagogy that I heard in an International Student Experience Community of Practice meeting. Mo-Ling Chui, the Course Leader of BA Design Management at LCC described a session on Chinese Creativity where she invited several speakers to give a talk about their work in Mandarin that had to be translated into English for students who didn’t speak the language. She described this as ‘shifting the centre‘ where home students had a one-off experience of what their international peers experienced on a daily basis. This also brings up the question of why English is always regarded the universal and superior language, when it can sometimes be limiting, especially in a global context.

UPDATE:

Since writing this post at the start of the T&L unit, I have participated in Victoria Odeniyi’s research, where she came and observed a couple of my tutorial sessions on Teams with the BA Textile Design students. I’m keen to read her report or hear any observations she made.

Hindi: Jury in Translation. Credit: Architectural Association

I also attended a rather revolutionary event called ‘Hindi: Jury in Translation‘ at the Architectural Association, organised by Manijeh Verghese (Head of Public Programmes at the AA). It was part of a bigger project her team were working on – to learn from ideas embedded in different languages, in terms of how we design and describe space. There were 6 students presenting their projects-in-progress to a panel of interdisciplinary critics with live simultaneous translation between Hindi and English. The event was on Zoom and attendees could tune in to either channel.

With English being pretty much the universal language of the world, it was wonderful to hear design, architecture and space being spoken about in Hindi. Also interesting as one saw both students and panel members borrow words from English when they chose to present or critique in Hindi, as they struggled to find some suitable words, perhaps a reminder of the colonial connections to the English language (especially in post colonial countries like India).

Hello!

Hello, my name is Kangan Arora.

I’m a Lecturer on the BA Textile and Jewellery Design courses at Central Saint Martins. I mostly work with the Year 1 teams and alongside teaching, focus on community building and decolonising the curriculum.

Developing pedagogy around inclusive teaching and community building, especially in a virtual space is what is currently driving my academic practice.

My own professional practice centres around colour and print design. Born in India and now based in London, my work explores bold colour, geometry, abstraction and playful pattern application; with a specific interest in traditional and contemporary colour languages and processes.

I have collaborated on projects with the likes of IKEA, The Office Group, Heal’s and Floor_Story across a range of products including soft furnishings, rugs, acoustic panels and more.