[mtp-teoria] upgrade komensky

[dusan]

halo,

yesterday i came across florian schneider's article on collaboration,
written around "working together" motto,
hopefully relevant for milos' call,
few longer quotes coming next.


in the text fs distinguishes between cooperation and collaboration:

"..Increasing evidence shows that 'working together' actually occurs
in rather unpredictable and unexpected ways. Rather than through the
exertion of the alleged generosity of a group made up of individuals in
the pursuit of solidarity, it often works as a brusque and even
ungenerous practice, where individuals rely on one another the more they
chase their own interests, their mutual dependence arising through
the pursuit of their own agendas. Exchange then becomes an effect
of necessity rather than one of mutuality, identification or desire.
This entails an initial level of differentiation between cooperation
and collaboration: in contrast to cooperation, collaboration is driven by
complex realities rather than romantic notions of common grounds or
commonality. It is an ambivalent process constituted by a set of
paradoxical relationships between co-producers who affect one another.."


moves into educational context:

"..In pedagogical discourse, both cooperation and collaboration are
relatively new terms. They emerged in the 1970s in the context of "joint
learning activities" and "project-based learning", which were supposed to
break with an authoritarian teacher-centred style of guiding the thinking
of the student.."


and as an ideal educational situation he speaks about
"..system not of exchange but of flow in which [teacher-students] positions
are avoided altogether..
..Collaborations are the black holes of knowledge regimes. They willingly
produce nothingness, opulence and ill-behaviour. And it is their very
vacuity which is their strength. Unlike cooperation, collaboration does
not take place for sentimental reasons, for philanthropical impulses or
for the sake of efficiency; it arises out of pure self interest.
Collaborations could reveal the amazing potential whereby an ignorant,
poor or otherwise property-less person can enable another ignorant, poor
or otherwise property-less person to know what he or she did not know and
to access what he or she did not access. It does not entail the
transmission of something from those who have to those who do not, but
rather the setting in motion of a chain of unforseen accesses.."


two more quotes:

"..It no longer matters who has knowledge and who owns the resources; what
matters is access: not a generously granted accessibility but a direct,
immediate and instant access, often gained illegally or illegitimately.."

"..If a model of collaboration were to be applied to educational cultures,
then it would have to accept an inability to predetermine outcomes even
while sharing a set of aspirations or directives or being anchored in
a set of recognised problematics. Collaboration entails rhizomatic
structures where knowledge grows exuberantly and proliferates in
unforeseeable ways. In contrast to cooperation, which always implies an
organic model and a transcendent function, collaboration is a strictly
immanent and wild praxis. Every collaborative activity begins and ends
within the framework of the collaboration. It has no external goal and
cannot be decreed; it is strict intransitivity, it takes place, so to
speak, for its own sake."


full article:
http://summit.kein.org/node/190

..not sure if these ideas are constructive for organised longterm
education..

dusan





On Thu, May 3, 2007 6:39 pm, Milo* VOJT*CHOVSK* said:
> call for participation
> and for critical reading of the text
>
> thanks for comments
>
>
> upgrade.komensky.dot.org
> Prague 31.5.2007
>
> students/teachers meeting and discussion on the situation in Art and
> Education, across the disciplines
>
> What is the current state of education in the area of cross and
> interdisciplinary models and strategies? How students, technicians,
> artists and researchers in the area of traditional and innovative
> approaches, modes of thinking and working, transfer, share practices,
> knowledge and strategies?
>
> How schools, teachers and students reflect their own roles and positions?
> Are we able to form and re-form what is recently going on at several Art
> Academies, Humanities and Technical universities, but as well at
> highschools and other experimental education platforms in the Czech
> Republic (and abroad)?
>
> What are the concepts and experiences to face and challenge the tendencies
> of growing specialization and thoughts on the efficiency of collaboration
> and communication across the professions and language boundaries?
>
> Can we assume that the conception, production, management, use of many new
> tools are increasingly relying on the merging of artistic, scientific,
> technological, social models emerging from daily life, arts, science, and
> humanities?
>
> Or it is only wishful thinking since the discourses of the different
> branches of knowledge, art and crafts are too specific and difficult to
> converge, to accessing such difficult and complex aspiration of students
> with analytical, critical and creative skills and knowledge?
>
> statement:
>
> new tools and technical environments as digital tools for visualisation,
> wireless environments, nanotechnology, smart, mobile, ubiquitous
> technologies offer many opportunities for the convergences of the
> traditional strategies and tools, which we are applying in the educational
> and academic context of Art praxis and theory.
>
> In order to share and live in the conceptual and material space artist and
> non artists should achieve and strive not only for the technical
> mastering, but as well for the creative skills to understand and recycle
> the existing technologies, as well to search for new contexts and broader
> consequences of the artifact: the poetic, social, economic, and
> environmental factors, an insight into philosophy, production, social and
> historical contexts.
>
> In general  the tendencies acedemic education are under the influence of
> economicaly driven society.There is a call for increasingly productive
> ‘professional’ artists, curators, directors, critics, etc’. Can Art
> education we are familiar with, be modeled after this standarts of
> production and efficiency model applied from technical fields?
>
> Perhaps there is a need to change the vocabulary – to swap knowledge
> transfer and knowledge assessment, professionalisation, quantifiable
> outcomes and marketability for another set of terms and another set of
> aspirations. The meeting aims to articulate this situation from the point
> of individual perception and experiences.
>
> The following questions have been asked in the occasion of the last
> meeting on art and education at the FAMU more than year ago.
>
> How do you perceive the importance of continuity from different grades of
> education. basic, middle, academic, graduate, postgraduate in this
> context?
>
> What methods of learning and teaching "new media" do your prefer?
>
> What is the proportion between theory and practical /hands on/ in your
> school, program?
>
> Does your curriculum support collaboration, interdisciplinary and project
> based learning?
>
> Do you cooperate with other departments, faculties, universities?
>
> Do you cooperate with the industry, with companies and institutes from
> different sectors and in what form?
>
> How important is international cooperation for you program?
>
> What are the problems and challenges your program is facing?
>
> This meeting should enhance the cooperation and the transfer of knowledge
> between different institutions involved in new media education in the
> Czech republic and internationally.
>
> We invite you to be a part of this.
>
> Milos Vojtechovsky
>
> vojtechovskym at famu.cz
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