Many students find it really difficult to work experimentally. Because when you experiment, you run the risk that it won't be 'nice'.
By Miriam Katz, The magazine Billedkunstneren #1 2024
Also read: Welcome to the laboratory for innovative art education
Is my picture nice or ugly? Do I like this artwork or do I not like it? These are questions that art teachers often hear students ask, says Aura Jakobsen, art teacher at Brøndbyvester Skole in Copenhagen.
She is one of the approximately 25 teachers who have participated in the development project Creative Elective Laboratory at ARKEN - Museum of Contemporary Art in Ishøj.
"It can be challenging to open up the conversation about art, because many of the young people need help to find words that are not just 'nice' or 'ugly' or 'strange'. In ARKEN's elective laboratory, I have gained concrete ideas and inspiration for how I can help students put words to works - both those of others and those they create themselves. This means that we get away from assessing whether a work is good or bad, and instead have a more open and investigative approach to art," she says.
One of the approaches from the elective laboratory that she uses in her teaching is about facilitating what in the visual arts subject is called picture conversation. Today, she therefore always has two boxes standing in the classroom with a multitude of words, written on small pieces of paper. These can be words like 'fragmented', 'lavish', 'cold', 'warm', 'closed' 'open' and other descriptive words.
When the students have to talk about their own works, or look at artists' works together, they are allocated 5-6 slips of paper from the boxes. The task is to choose which words they think fit which elements in the works - and to argue for the choices.
Another exercise that Aura Jakobsen is happy to use is what the museum teachers at ARKEN call 'part and whole'. As, for example, when she worked with the concept of 'hybrids' in Leonora Carrington's works, after she and her students had experienced the British-Mexican surrealist's paintings at ARKEN.
“They were given the task of choosing a sub-element in one of Carrington's paintings and drawing it. After which they could justify and discuss each other's choices. It's a trick that makes the picture conversation work really well. When you go in and describe works with a razor-sharp focus on certain elements, it is a concrete way to talk about relatively complex works, which can be a little unmanageable. It often acts as the key to the work opening up to the students," says Aura Jakobsen.
The art of daring to experiment
Aura Jakobsen began the course in the Creative Elective Laboratory by testing the museum teachers' methods herself in a teacher's workshop. After that, she visited ARKEN's exhibitions with her students, and finally the museum teachers came out to her 8th grade art team at the school, so that they could work with her on the learning formats from the laboratory.
And just like the techniques used in video interviews, the techniques the people from ARKEN use to get the students to work experimentally are something she takes great pleasure in using in her own teaching, she says.
"Many students find it really difficult to work experimentally. Because when you experiment, you run the risk that it won't be 'nice', and many of these teenagers hold back out of fear that what they create is not good enough," says Aura Jakobsen.
Perfectionism and demands for neatness are problematic, both because it limits the students' learning, and because the students for the visual arts exam are assessed, among other things, on their ability to work experimentally in image-creating processes.
"Here I have been greatly helped by the techniques that the museum teachers use to show that there are many different ways to experience a work of art. Many of the exercises I've learned in the elective lab are about allowing students to talk about the art they encounter without judgment. And it rubs off when students work with their own works. They are more willing to try things out when they are not concerned with whether 'my picture is better than yours' - but instead get the impression that 'my picture is different from yours'. When you understand that all experiences of art are legal, it becomes easier to experiment," says Aura Jakobsen.
All the techniques she has learned in the elective laboratory are based on contemporary art. And it opens the students' eyes to the role that art can play in their own lives, she believes:
"Some of the students are surprised by what art can be when they visit ARKEN's exhibitions. They see that works of art are not just old, beautiful water lily paintings, but that art can have many different expressions and be something that is relevant to them.”
The encounter with contemporary art leaves a clear impression, even when the students return to school, says the art teacher:
"We are currently working with political art in 8th grade. The students' works are, for example, about the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Israel-Palestine, the climate crisis and prejudice against homosexuals. But there are also works that deal with the power of adults to decide over the lives of young people, where students react to a new rule that the school must be a mobile phone-free zone. In this way, the students use art as a space where they relate to the things that happen in their lives – both what is close and what is further away.”