Robi Kroflič

Art as a Tool for Understanding Inclusion and Enabling Capabilities for Transgression of Different Impairments

Ljubljana, 9. 5. 2018

(Matej Peljhan – Metamorphosis) (Matej Peljhan – On the Bridge)

To understand the value of inclusion, we have to recognize historical practices of expelling. (R. Kroflič, How to domesticate the otherness? (Three metaphors of otherness in the European cultural tradition). Paideusis. Vol. 16. No. 3. Pp. 33-43).

Art is a privileged place of subjectification in education. (G. Biesta, Letting Art Teach)

Topics of Lecture • My basic topics of teaching and research:

– Theory (Philosophy) of education – Pedagogical work with learners with special needs – Education through artistic experience

• In this lecture I will combine: – Theory of inclusion as a basic theoretical concept in

the field of education of learners with special needs – Deepening of our understanding of theoretical

concepts with the messages of visual art tradition (empowerment)

– Enabling subjectification of learners with special needs through their artistic expressions

Aims of Contemporary Education (G. Biesta)

• In his scientific research, Gert Biesta presents a thesis on three domains of educational goals and activities:

– qualification

– socialization

– subjectification

• „Subjectification has to do with the interest of education in the subjectivity or ‚subject-ness‘ of those we educate. It has to do with emancipation and freedom and with the responsibility that comes with such freedom.“ (Biesta (2013). The Beautiful Risk of Education )

• When we speak about education of learners with special needs, we usually don‘t have in mind their subjectification (capabilities for the struggle for independent life)

Two Key Features of Artistic Experience

• Art as a symbolic language for depicturing of key existential experiences, that uses creative (Kant), playful (Gadamer), and experiential (Dewey) way of recognizing the world

• Art as a way of stepping into the world with the whole body (Merleau-Ponty), and the ability to change/make a better position of myself-in-the-world (Pallasmaa)

• Use of symbolic languages of arts as empowerment in education (Freire)

• Use of arts as ways of stepping into the world as subjectification through education (Ranciere, Biesta)

Art As a Way of Empowerment Through Recognition of Historical Roots of „Domestification of Otherness“

• History of the attitude toward madness through the lenses of European visual arts – Foucault, M. Madness & Civilization. A History of Insanity

in the Age of Reason. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.

– Kroflič, R. How to Domesticate Otherness? (Three Metaphors of Otherness in the European Cultural Tradition). Paideusis. Vol. 16. No. 3. Pp. 33-43.

• Basic idea of this research: in the Antiquity and in the Medieval era, the attitude toward insanity was still ambivalent; typical depictions of ambivalent attitude toward insanity are: Medeia and the attitude toward epilepsy as god‘s-illness in orthodox church

• from the Descates philosophy, sanity becomes the ultimate criteria of humanity…

Three Metaphors of Expelling Otherness From 15. to 20. Century

A Poem Ship of Fools (1497)

Cervantes‘ Don Quixote

Probably the most well known fool in

the New era

• The Fool is the person who is permitted to speak the truth, and it is not surprising that in the first edition of Brant’s satire Narrenschiff (1497), an engraving depicts the author as a scholar surrounded by books and dressed as a university professor, whose cap from behind has the typical shape of the court jester’s cockscomb; and in one hand he has a broom – a medieval symbol of witches…

Hieronymus Bosch:

Ship of Fools

Painted between 1490 and 1500

Louvre, Paris

• The leper – second metaphor of expelling of fools

• The most interesting depiction of the access to truth which is reserved for the expelled fool is certainly the tree placed by Hieronymus Bosch on the Ship of Fools in place of the mast, which can be interpreted as the symbol of the biblical tree of knowledge of good and evil…

• In the seventeenth-century Europe, when the “Hôpital” began to emerge, as well as psychiatry in the nineteenth century, the hidden aim of exclusion was covered under the veil of „care for poor insane people“ (Foucault).

Paul Gaughin:

Vairaumati

Painted in 1896

D’Orsay, Paris

Vairaumati „is“

Eve of Tahitian

mythology

Today‘s perception of

the Noble savage

Gypsy dancer © Robi Kroflič

• The vision of The Noble Savage was strengthened at the turn of the nineteenth century, when the awareness of the negative side effects of civilization and enculturation grew, and The Noble Savage became the image of human liberated from the “ballast of culture”.

• Gauguin’s Vairaumati certainly expresses his deep conviction of civilization beyond European notions and of the equality of mythological and religious views of the origins of man. But we cannot help having the impression that the figure of The Noble Savage remained the figure of otherness beyond our own world: the figure of the native as an ideal object of tourist attraction in which the civilized man of the twentieth century seeks the remains of the “unspoilt nature” in both physical and cultural senses of the word.

Research of the Inclusive Relationships in Contemporary European Movies

• Me Too (2009 - Antonio Naharro in Álvaro Pastor) – down syndrome

• Intouchables (2011 – Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano) – physical impairment

• Brammetje Baas (2012 – Anna van der Heide) - ADHD

• Punk syndrome (2012 – JP Passi, Jukka Kärkäinen) – mental disabilities

• My Life as a Courgette (2016 – Claude Barras) - EBD

Artistic Creativity As a Subjectification

• Art therapy

• Self-representations

• Substitution of impairment in communication

• Catharsis of handicap

• Social engagement

Self-representations

© Jasmin Korbar – depiction of physical impairment

© Jasmin Korbar

© Raingoose – depiction of hearnig impairment

© Miha Šoštar – depiction of visual impairment

© Matej Peljhan

© Nino Rakovič - Selfie

Substitution of impairment in communication

Catharsis of handicap

© Evgen Bavčar

© Matej Peljhan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycy5Ri7PpXs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoVRosFDyGk&t=30s

Social engagement

•

© Klaudija Poropat – from the exhibition Personal Assistance in Our Existence

© Klaudija Poropat