Title: Alternative to What? Exploring Alternative Art Schools Through Spatiality, Participation and Performative Tools
Elle Reynolds
You can find the exegesis on
the Nottingham Trent University Repository
G L O S S A R Y
/genoɡræm/Genogram
A time-based mapping process that begins a possible genealogy of TOMA and other alternative art schools. The significance of the Genogram is that it offers both a horizontal and vertical reading.
Welcome
The works in the Genogram Study Centre document the alternative education space and are an orientation for the activating agent to the field of experimental models. They reveal the legacies, historical precedents, and extent of forms that experimental pedagogies and the alternative can take.
The components within the Genogram Study Centre are presented in physical form and include four A3-size Genograms and an accompanying viewfinder, lightbox, and inspection gloves, found in Box A.
T h e M a p p I n g S p a c e
The inclusion of four Genograms within Box A serves as an integral component of a comprehensive deep mapping endeavour focused on experimental art education spanning the years 1900 to 2023. Presented in a hybrid format encompassing both analogue and digital modalities, these Genograms are intended to be examined alongside Chapter 1 for contextual coherence (please go to Chapter 1 of the PDF, below). This exposition works in dialogue with the Defining space to map and consider histories, geographies, time and relationality as dimensions of alternative pedagogies.
Box A
Genograms
These listing and mapping works model the space of alternative education and are an orientation for the reader as an activating agent to consider and define the characteristics that make an alternative alternative.
You, the reader as the activating agent, are invited to turn on the lightbox, slip on the white gloves, and look at each of the four genograms separately. Next, layer each Genogram transparency in sequential order so that Genogram 1 is first. Alternatively, the Genograms can be layered in any configuration to gather or create readings. Stacking all four genograms together condenses the data, allowing for new connections to be made.
Components
The components within this online repository include two A3 sheets. These are accompanied by a black viewfinder, and inspection gloves, found in Box A.
Box A
Extending Anton Vidokle's chronology through a deep mapping of historical and recent models of alternative art education and experimental pedagogies.
The genograms shown here and in analogue form in the lightbox of Box A can be read horizontally as individual maps or layered vertically as relational maps.
Now apply the compositional viewing frame and isolate one area of Genogram 2. The invitation is to meander through the reimagined and experimental models presented within the frame of the viewfinder. Observe the locations on the Genogram and where the models sit in relation to each other, their names, geographies, positions in linear time, and periods of being active.
In selecting the sheet of red text, the reader can observe there are headings which have grouped similar terms, relationships or a central theme. These groupings or ‘pools of meaning’ establish some of the conditions of the alternative art schools.
The Genograms can be used to place the alternative art schools and alternative pedagogies in dialogue with each other, for example, by combining schools offering another potential conceptualisation for an alternative art school. Within the Genograms are a number of broken lines, indicating a connection between schools. These operate across time and geographical boundaries.
