European Journal of Philosophy in Arts Education

Editorial

Ketil Thor Thorgersen — 2024-10-11

EJPAE is finally coming out with the tenth issue after more than a year of rest. Why this absence? EJPAE is more or less a one-man show with me, the editor in chief, doing most of the work. Since EJPAE is unpaid voluntary work (as much work in academia is), the editorial work suffers when I have too many other things in my life. I have hade the blessing of becoming a father to a baby boy which has taken up most of my extra time, but as he is now 2,5 years old, time is slowly getting available again. I am so happy to be able to present this fantastic issue comprising of three articles from different art forms and practices.

The first article is based on an experiment and a curiosity: What would happen if the teacher students were allowed to own their own learning processes in a museum context? Nikonanou, Panagiotis, Moraitopoulou and Viseri from Greece reports from an exiting, developing and challenging time where the ideas of the commons are being tested against what is common – what is usual and expected. In the article Commoning the teaching of art in a museum context: SMOOTH reflections, the teachers experience that their roles are challenged as they attempt to hand over responsibility to the students. The teacher training academia questions the usability of a process with no predefined outcome. Towards the end of the article the authors develops a suggestion for a framework for an education of the commons in a museum-higher education context.

Our second article, ‘Dido’s Lament’, a Lament for our Dying Planet? by Inga Marie Nesmann-Aass, offers a compelling re-interpretation of Purcell’s famous aria. Set against the backdrop of Annie Lennox’s modern performance during the pandemic, Nesmann-Aass connects this 17th-century piece to the global climate crisis, reflecting on the ways historical music can speak to contemporary crises. The article weaves together embodied performance, environmental activism, and pedagogical applications, asking us to rethink how we relate to music from the past in the context of today’s urgent challenges.

Finally, in Abstraction through the Kaleidoscope: Playful Concept Creation with Irma Salo Jæger, Heidi Marjaana Kukkonen invites us into the creative world of abstract art through a philosophical and playful exploration with Finnish-Norwegian artist Irma Salo Jæger. Kukkonen reflects on the potential of abstraction as a tool for education, where the act of playing with abstract ideas opens up new perspectives and disrupts conventional thinking. Her approach, informed by new materialist theory, reveals how abstraction is not only a philosophical concept but also a way to engage deeply and actively with art.

This issue exemplifies the richness of art in education, with each article offering unique perspectives on how we learn through artistic practices. I am proud to share this with you and hope it sparks as much curiosity and reflection for you as it has for me.

Ketil Thor Thorgersen

Editor in Chief Stockholm October 4^th 2024

Commoning the teaching of art in a museum context

Niki Nikonanou — 2024-10-11

Drawing on the experience of a series of multi-art education workshops run in a museum of modern art with the participation of a group of upper secondary school students, this paper reflects on how the philosophy of educational commons might help us rethink the role of the educator in museum-based art-education initiatives. By focusing on the transformations, the challenges, the failures and the openings experienced by the educators of this program in their attempt to work on the basis of the philosophy of educational commons, we arrive at an articulation of what might be referred to as patterns of commoning teacher agency. More specifically, based of an ecological model of teacher agency that Priestley et al. (2015) proposed on the basis on the work of Emirbayer & Mische (1998) we identify patterns of commoning museum educators’ agency that operated on an iterational, a practical-evaluative and a projective dimension. On the iterational dimension, a commoning approach to teaching led museum educators to re-evaluate past experiences, received ideas, and cherished practices, inducing a process of unlearning. On the practical-evaluative dimension, it enabled museum educators to implement new ways of working and relating to students and their worlds, and to come up with ideas and tools that expand “The social, structural and material ‘here and now’ of possible agency” (Philpott & Spruce 2021, 290) and its distribution. On the projective dimension it enabled museum educators to imagine alternative ways of exercising agency, envisioning a way of commoning the museum. The resultant reorientation of the role of the teacher in museum-based, commons-derived creative art-education practices might be seen as providing a much needed alternative to the pervading neoliberal colonisation of education initiatives in cultural institutions.

‘Dido’s Lament’, a Lament for our Dying Planet?

Inga Marie Nesmann-Aas — 2024-10-11

‘Dido’s Lament’ from the opera Dido and Aeneas (Henry Purcell, 1680s) has found its manifold ways through history. Still holding a massive popularity on the world’s opera stages, it is also realized through several performers in various musical styles. Do such performances pose a ‘threat’ to the historical perspectives, or do they offer new ways of experiencing this music?

I look specifically into Annie Lennox’ performance of ‘Dido’s Lament’ with London City Voices. Recorded during the pandemic, it exemplifies an aspect of the crisis in music during the pandemic. Further, Annie Lennox herself relates the lament to our dying planet and thus to the global climate crisis. The objective is twofold, in that I seek to show the value of understanding the culture where the text and music originates, and to open up for re-configuration and appropriation where we seek a meaningful performance and experience in our current context. This is done in light of central issues concerning performance of historic music. This approach is both applicable for performers and in and educational setting for students and teachers in music education.

Founded in an embodied experiential approach, I will, through historic references, textual analysis, and analysis of this realisation by Annie Lennox, address the various ‘crises’ mentioned. From centring around Dido’s tragic fate towards a beyond human tragedy concerning the planet’s survival, we shift from an anthropocentric view towards a wider and embodied approach to this piece of music, opening new for possibilities and experiences for performers and audiences, which is also highly relevant in an educational setting.

Abstraction through the kaleidoscope

Heidi Kukkonen — 2024-10-11

The purpose of this article is to study the philosophical concept of abstraction based on a day spent with the Finnish-Norwegian artist Irma Salo Jæger. Our concept creation, where we experiment with different understandings of abstraction, is informed by new materialist theory-practice and Deleuze and Guattari’s (2009) philosophy of concept. Throughout the day spent with the artist at her studio, the concept of abstraction grows and becomes concrete in the stories, memories, paintings and books around us. Inspired by our concept creation, I argue that the concrete can be understood as the elements that create representational logic in abstraction: traditions, theories and mathematical patterns. The abstract of abstraction stems from the representation-breaking qualities: the sensitive and intuitive working progress and the agential and affective properties of the materials. Abstraction has both the abstract and concrete that constantly become each other. Representation is understood as a threshold rather than an impasse. The movement between the abstract and the concrete creates uncertainty, which can have educational potential. Playing (Harker 2005) enables the educational potential to unfold: it makes possible experimenting, balancing between the abstract and concrete and building a complex, kaleidoscopic understanding of the concept of abstraction.