Public Art Archipelagos: Mapping Aesthetic Relations of Art Teachers in Canada and Spain

• In Event: 63.054 - Mapping A/r/tography: Walking for Place-Conscious Pedagogies of Practice

Abstract

Objectives or purposes:
The purpose of our presentation is to examine the trans-curricular and trans-cultural implications of pre-service art teachers engaged in public art as a way of mapping aesthetic relations in their home communities in Canada and Spain. In this case, we explore two segments: the TransCanada Trail in the urban landscape in Montreal, Canada and the Mozarabic Way, the stretch of The Way of St. James that crosses the city of Granada, Spain. In both cases, these trails are historically significant in defining nationhood and with public art installations, offer new ways to engage in historical and contemporary conversations about identity construction.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework:
Adopting an a/r/tographic orientation, we build on two primary frameworks: Canadian geographer Harold Innis, by adapting theoretical perspectives of resource-based staples, in this case, public art within the urban heartland of Canada’s cultural capital; and Spanish filmmaker José Val del Omar, by taking as reference his visual and educational inquiries related to the Spanish heritage. Together these perspectives are applied to investigate public art beyond existing tropes to experiment conceptually and in practice with new materiality as a form of landscape interpretation.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry:
As a case study, we begin with the a/r/tographic approach of living inquiry, supported by techniques of visual art research (photo elicitation) and qualitative strategies (reflective writing, interviews). We apply the sensorial method of walking to shape how we map geographies of self-in-relation as idiosyncratic, multiple and expansive, rather than thematic and reductive. Such inquiry provides openings for artful expressions of photography, sound installations, along with visual journals and oral histories.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials:
Field research with two undergraduate classes (one in Canada and one in Spain) provide the basis for our evidence, objects and data sources. We collaborate to create curriculum and to engage our preservice student-teachers to map their identity construction with public art. We exchange these understandings of professional exteriority (heartlands) with one another across nations.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view:
We comparatively assess our experience and the experiences of our students, in relation to pedagogic networks that extend internationally to open systems of intellectual exchange, with distinctive consciousness and historiography, yet as artists and teachers, we investigate how these nodes transgress spaces/places in ways that continually inform our teaching practice as being in movement.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work:
We focus our inquiry on how the nexus of public art and movement provides a platform upon which to rethink methods of art teacher education. We attend to emerging cosmopolitan perspectives by walking segments of former trade and migration routes to engage with public art as a fold upon the historic-contemporary resonance of routes. Such collaborative curriculum bridges the space between our student-teachers, offering an innovative approach to both the event of knowledge creation and the development of curricular design and instructional deliver that takes into account international art education.

Authors

• Rocío Lara-Osuna, University of Granada

• Anita Sinner, Concordia University