Expanded Education Programme, Students’ Biennale 2018

September–December 2018

The third edition of the Students’ Biennale (SB), a higher education initiative of the Kochi Biennale Foundation, in partnership with Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) and Foundation for Indian Art education (FIAE), took place in December 2018 at Kochi. SB 2018 involved a multilateral approach, featuring an exhibition, an expanded education forum and field-based research on the condition of art education as it stands in India.

The Expanded Education Programme was a key initiative of the SB. Facilitated by the FICA and FIAE, it was organised with a view to facilitate a series of engagements with students and teachers to identify existing frameworks of learning across art colleges in India, and to imagine new directions in pedagogical practices within and around these institutions.

The Expanded Education Programme brought together experienced artist-educators to develop and offer a series of week-long workshops at select arts colleges across the country exploring the varied climates under which art production and pedagogy is developing.

With focus on art history, intermedia, technology, critical theory, public art, architecture and the city, and community engagement, these workshops were designed to engage the students in process-intensive, practice-based learning. The workshops centred around responding to local contexts and forms of knowledge accumulated into the fabric of different art colleges, acknowledging and attempting to engage with the larger intellectual community that exists around art colleges, and tackling challenges such as limited resources, institutional norms and geography that greatly determine the functioning of these spaces. Above all, they closely focussed on the expertise gathered by the educator team who have spent many years developing their teaching strategies and via workshops are accounting for shifts needed in art education in the 21st century.

A team of researchers worked alongside the educators, supporting the process by documenting and compiling reports on these workshop modules, thus preparing the ground for a publication that focuses on art practice and pedagogy in India. The online publication, now available, becomes an effective way to disseminate the process to art institutions across the country post the biennale, and even have people use these modules in the long run.

FICA also worked with the Kochi Biennale Foundation to organize a conference to bring together pedagogues and artists to discuss the changing scope of art education in the 21st century.

Working alongside the educators will be a team of researchers who will support the process by documenting and compiling reports on these workshop modules, thus preparing the ground for a publication that focuses on art practice and pedagogy in India. The publication becomes an effective way to disseminate the process to art institutions across the country post the biennale, and even have people use these modules in the long run.

FICA will also work with the Kochi Biennale Foundation to organize a conference to bring together pedagogues and artists to discuss the changing scope of art education in the 21st century.

Educators from India

1. Kausik Mukhopadhayay, artist and Assistant Professor, Kamla Raheja Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies
2. Sarada Natarajan, art historian with teaching experience at the Department of Art, Design and Performing Arts, Shiv Nadar University, Noida, and at the Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad
3. Mriganka Madhukaillya, artist and teacher, currently Media Lab Faculty-in-Charge at the Department of Design, IIT Guwahati
4. Santhosh Sadanandan, Assistant Professor, School of Cultures and Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University Delhi
5. V. Suresh, artist and Professor, Fine Arts Department, Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad.

International Educators

6. Dr Igal Myrtenbaum (Israel), Composer, teaches at Levinsky College, Tel Aviv. In 2006 he co-founded the Electro-acoustic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, a unique programme devoted to music composition and technology.
7. Federica Martini (Switzerland), art historian and curator, teacher and coordinator of MAPS – Arts in Public Spheres at ECAV, Sierre, Switzerland. She is the curator of the Museum of Post-Digital Cultures, founded with Elise Lammer in 2013 (www.postdigitalcultures.ch).
8. Rangoato Hlasane (South Africa), artist, project manager and scholar based in Johannesburg. He co-founded the Keleketla! Library, an interdisciplinary library and media arts project based at the Drill Hall in Johannesburg, with collaborators Malose Malahlela and Bettina Malcomess.
9. Sanathanan Thamotharampillai (Sri Lanka), artist, art educator and co-founder of the Sri Lanka Archive of Contemporary Art, Architecture and Design (SLAAD). He has been Senior Lecturer in Art History, Department of Fine Arts, Jaffna University and advisor on Sri Lanka’s national curriculum for teaching art in schools.

Researchers

Karthik K.G., artist, researcher and currently teaching digital art at Ambedkar University, Delhi

Bhooma Padmanabhan, a visual arts professional with experience in curation, programming, research and art education

Vidya Shivadas, curator and Director, FICA