Description
Circular Questioning (2015) explores how space has the potential to transform the way in which we teach and learn. The work attempts to break down hierarchies and promote critical thinking about knowledge exchange within a large, white inflatable space. Inflatables, with their links to utopian ideals, open up possibilities of this space to embody alternative forms of teaching and learning. The nomadic inflatable form becomes an alternative demountable classroom, the walls are blank but not rigid, the constant movement of the air inside alludes to a non-static way for knowledge to be shared.
The space within is intended for the exchange of knowledge about knowledge exchange. It features a central element, a spinning ‘wheel of fortune,’ with a chalkboard surface. Borrowing from a classroom palette the wheel features a series of questions about teaching and learning. Such as; How does space transform the way we teach & learn?, How do we unlearn? Can we unlearn? How can you subvert hierarchies in information exchange?
The wheel is spun and its pointer lands on a random question, a starting point for discussion. The use of chalk allows the questions to be adapted, removed or replaced by the participants. This creates a revolving dialogue where people are invited to listen to, ask and answer questions and given agency to do so.
Circular Questioning was created for Didactic Tools more on the project here:
“Didactic Tools features five artists responding to the current explosion of instructional and educational culture; from YouTube tutorials and TED to the proliferation of data visualisation and analytics, digital whistleblowing and new political movements.
The ensemble of artists brings together disciplines of performance, visual, sound and media art with biological science and architectural practice.
Through collective research – sharing their own tools and conducting experiments in peer-to-peer education – the artists have drawn lines between the vast field of sub-cultures and movements in which teaching and learning now thrive.
Didactic Tools presents five artists embracing the challenges of working with knowledge in art, each considering in their own way how the transference of the work’s ‘source code’ (information/intention/meaning/provocation/polemic) might resonate with its evocative qualities.”
Didactic Tools began with a week long intensive workshop in 2014 as a development to the 2015 exhibition at Fremantle Arts Centre. This project was convened by Perth-based company Hydra Poesis and organised by artists Kynan Tan and Sam Fox.
