Forms for Encounter & Exchange:
artist-led approaches to public pedagogy in the Asia Pacific region  

Call for Abstracts:
Special Edition of the Public Pedagogies Journal 202

Keywords: the commons, informality, community, ethics, publics, collectives, grassroots, art & activism, peer learning, public/private space, engagement, collaboration, radical pedagogy.

There is a burgeoning field of artist-led pedagogic practices in the Asia Pacific region that employs forms of shared knowledge production in the public realm as a core ethical responsibility of creative and scholarly practice. From community-led archives to public learning, collective studying to public art interventions, and collaborative approaches to art-making, the range of contexts from which these artist-led public pedagogies arise directly influence their form and the way they are encountered. These artist-led forms for encounter and exchange can engage publics by challenging hegemonies, critiquing power, and engaging communities in civil dialogue about urgent local concerns.  

As forms of public pedagogy, these practices tend to value collective approaches over the individualism imposed by western art education (KUNCI, 2020; Jurriens, 2020). While the relationship between socially engaged art and public pedagogy is typically positioned through Eurocentric traditions as an extension of avant-garde art movements, community arts, or popular education (Badham, 2019; Thompson, 2012), we extend this invitation to practices which emerge in culturally attuned ways in their respective geopolitical contexts. 

This special edition aims to stimulate a dialogue between artists, researchers and organisers who are engaged in these practices. We are particularly interested in practices of public pedagogy that: create sites for the emergence of new questions and the circulation and sharing of knowledge(s) in the public realm through artistic forms and relational pedagogical encounters (Charman & Dixon, 2021); are formed outside of institutional contexts, address social tensions, and build networks of solidarity; and are led by artists while privileging local aesthetics and community self-determination. 

We invite artists, researchers and organisers to submit critical, creative and/or experimental contributions to this special edition that explores the relationship between forms for encounter and exchange of artist-led public pedagogies and their contexts. We welcome scholarly articles (5000-8000 words), creative submissions (video, audio, or images), or a combination of creative and scholarly work.

We are particularly interested in submissions that intersect with the following questions:

• How and why do artists organise collective forms of public learning? 
• How do these practices activate and nurture solidarity?
• How do artists describe and frame these practices in relation to their contexts – conceptually, politically and/or aesthetically?
• How do these practices critique and challenge the institutions of art and education? 
• How do publics encounter these forms for encounter and exchange?
• How do these artist-led forms for encounter and exchange produce and circulate knowledge?

The Journal of Public Pedagogies is a peer-reviewed academic journal that is published by the Public Pedagogies Institute. The journal publishes research and practice in learning and teaching that extends beyond the boundaries of traditional or formal educational institutions. These areas may include arts, community engagement, social pedagogy, public history, work in and research on public institutions such as museums, libraries, neighbourhood houses, community centers, as well as practice, research and evaluation in public pedagogies.  

For more information: Please contact any member of our editorial committee to discuss your submission:

• Ferdiansyah Thajib, Member of KUNCI Study Forum & Collective, Indonesia; PostDoc Fellow at Leipzig Lab, Leipzig University, Germany, ferdi.thajib@gmail.com
• Gatari Surya Kusuma, Member of KUNCI, Bakudapan – Food Studies Group and Struggle for Sovereignty, Indonesia, gatariisurya@gmail.com  
• Diwas Raja Kc, Head of Research and Archives, Nepal Picture Library, Nepal, kc.diwas@gmail.com 
• Kelly Hussey-Smith, artist-researcher, CAST (Contemporary Art and Social Transformation) research group, RMIT University, Australia, kelly.hussey-smith@rmit.edu.au 
• Marnie Badham, artist-researcher, CAST, RMIT University, Naarm/ Melbourne, Australia, marnie.badham@rmit.edu.au 
• Karen Charman, Founder Public Pedagogies Institute, Victoria University, Australia, karen.charman@vu.edu.au  

How to submit an abstract: send the summary of your article (500 word abstract) or creative work (300 words + and one web link to related artworks or attach three sample images) by April 30^th to karen.charman@vu.edu.au. Full contributions are due July 30th. 

References

Badham, M 2019, ‘Spectres of evaluation indeterminacy and the negotiation of value (s) in socially engaged art,’ Co Creation, No. 5, pp. 205-216.

Charman, K & Dixon, M 2021, Theory and methods for public pedagogy research, Routledge.

Hussey-Smith, K (2022 forthcoming) ‘Towards community praxis in community-oriented art education’ McQuilten, G. & Palmer D. (eds.) The world we want: Dystopian & utopian impulses in art making, Intellect: UK.

Jurriëns, E 2020, ‘Indonesian Artivism: Layers of performativity and connectivity’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol, 20 no.2, pp. 231-252.

Kc, Diwas Raja (ed.) 2018, Dalit: A quest for dignity. Nepal Picture Library.

KUNCI Study Forum & Collective 2020, ‘The school of improper education’, Critical Times, vol.3 no. 3, pp. 566-578.

Thompson, N (ed.) 2012, Living as form: Socially engaged art from 1991-2011. MIT Press.

Images:

1 One of the tools at the School of Improper Education, KUNCI (2019), Coffee and the Makers, illustration by Agen OH

2 Public Reading as Resistance (2019- ongoing) convened by Kelly Hussey Smith and Marnie Badham, RMIT University lawn, Melbourne, photo by Ceri Hann

3 & 4 An exhibition view of Nepal Picture Library’s The Public Life of Women from Photo Kathmandu 2018, photo by Chemi

Hot House Community Projects have produced a fantastic series of podcasts showcasing the diverse and inspiring people who take action in local communities.

Check it out:

https://www.hothouseprojects.org/podcast

Call for Papers: Journal of Public Pedagogies special issue

Apocalyptic Pedagogies: Rethinking Publics and Publicness in the Time of Apocalypse

Guest Edited by Jake Burdick & Jennifer A. Sandlin

This issue centers on the public in an historical moment that is characterized by the metaphor of exposure. Under the aegis of COVID-19, we have fled public spaces out of fear of exposure to the virus, and simultaneously, the nature of the public itself has been subject to an exposure more akin to that of photography. COVID, as well as the overlapping sociocultural pandemics of racism, austerity, and fascism, has shone a light into, through, and across the institutions that we hail as public; created the desire for new spaces of public discourse and pedagogies; exposed disturbingly racist and violent movements for ‘freedom’ that had formerly been mostly hidden from sight; and potentially has been revealed as an ultimately illusory construct. The public has been lauded, even fetishized, across the history of Western thought, from its inception as a site of purportedly democratic discourse in antiquity to contemporary social thought that hails it as a space set apart from a world all-but-swallowed by the ravenousness of privatism and late capitalism.

Read full call for papers and submission details here

Final submissions can be:
● full length articles (5,000 to 6,000 exclusive of references) that theoretically and/or empirically attend to understanding apocalyptic pedagogies, publics, and/or publicness (these will be double blind peer reviewed)
● short texts (1000 to 1500 words) that explicate a particular public or pedagogy of publicness
● photo essays with short descriptions/theorizations

Deadlines (updated):
● January 8, 2020: Proposal/expression of interest (250 words plus 50-word bio)
● February 1, 2021 authors will be notified of acceptance of their proposal
● May 1, 2021 final submissions due for blind peer review

As part of our 2020 seminar program a session was conducted by the Climate Change Education Network (CCEN) titled Learning about Location in a Climate of Change.

The following are some samples of the group poetry and other reflections that were created during the session and more can be viewed on the CCEN website.

The seminar was created and presented by CCEN members Bronwyn Sutton, Gen Blades, Meg Upton and Peta White for the Public Pedagogies Institute Online Seminar Series Public Pedagogies of Location.

For more information about the seminar please contact CCEN.

Human spirit

Thirsty
Thirsty for new possibilities
New elders to guide our way

Surrender to unmanicured dynamics
Out of our control
Land(E)scaping
Becoming, reclamation, resilience

The Human spirit
The Cactus spirit
The Virus spirit
The Earth spirit

No borders
One spirit

I noticed the absence of aircraft in the sky
Thirsty for normalcy but for somethings that are new
Waters are calm but impending feeling of
something will happen
Precariousness
Notion of human control is drastically changed

“It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world” – Mary Oliver

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A storyline

A courtyard tree
A bunch of lemons
A miniature pony
A camping ground
A roughened barked tree
Ducks and masks
Coping strategies
Dissonance between Fahrenheit and Celsius
Dissonance between human and natural and human world

The natural world is still doing its great big thing
The fact that we are more contained means we may have moved back to a different rhythm
Changing scale, changing sense of time
We notice it more

Movement and connecting to space
Quietness of tone,

Reflective, taking time to pause, look and appreciate,

The current capacity of nature to continually regenerate?

---

Collage of pictures to illustrate temporality with word phrases to help speak to the images and highlight our theme of noticing.

Because we are here…
connecting inside outside.
Connecting with life,
the cycle of life.

This place was once burnt by grassfires
but now it’s grown back

Questions of life, death, sickness, & strength

The continuum of time – past, present and future.

Receding glaciers in Iceland – A constant and a change

Beauty that reminds me of home

This is a timeless desert in Namibia – out of time –
ever changing yet never changing

Bees collecting pollen and nectar in Spring
like they do every year at this time

The dead and the exchange of matter between states

More information about the session and examples of group work are available on the CCEN website.