Imagitate the State
pensee d'escalier
- Audio Collage -
Les Pensées D’Escalier: Shifting Margins to Centre/From Centre to Margins
This interactive installation invites students, faculty and community members to question dominant sites and modes of learning by creating discursive spaces for the “unsaid”. In shifting the margins to centre, this exhibit seeks to give voice to the inner workings of our minds as we travel to and from work, class, or home. We argue that it is the liminal, in-between spaces such as stairwells and elevators where much meaning-making occurs regarding our lived experiences. Furthermore, it is through interrupting our day-to-day routines as both students and educators, that we can begin to examine the way in which hegemonic discourses invade our collective consciousness, consequently neglecting, excluding, or reinterpreting our thoughts on the periphery. By making the unheard heard, we honour the complex, multi-faceted, differential and often contradictory ways in which these thoughts become known. If we de-centre learning from the classroom, and art from the gallery, what are the possibilities for re-interpreting knowledge-making and education? Art and art-making? What are the implications of Les Pensees D’Escalier for sites of learning “out there” … and, “in here”?
This audio soundtrack was assembled with the help of OISE students’ voices, and thoughts.
Sarah Switzer is a local arts-educator and activist in Toronto, with an empahsis on arts-based HIV/AIDS programming, popular education, social justice education and youth engagement. Her research centres on critically exploring arts-informed HIV/AIDS Prevention and Education curriculum for youth.
Carly Stasko is a grassroots media literacy educator and founder of the Youth Media Literacy Project. Carly leads workshops in high schools, universities and community centers in Toronto and abroad about media, art and social change. She is also an artist, activist and self titled "Imagitator" (someone who agitates imagination). Her recent chapter "(r)Evolutionary Healing: Jamming the Culture and Shifting the Power" is published by Routledge in New Wave Cultures: Feminism, Subcultures, Activism, edited by Anita Harris. To view her Madvertisement collages or learn more about upcoming workshops and events visit www.intrinsik.net
Christine Jackson is the Program Coordinator of the Arts with the Toronto District School Board. Her arts advocacy has extended beyond the TDSB through her multiple roles as speaker, workshop presenter, curriculum developer, and OISE instructor. Her doctoral studies and research focus on the arts as critical multiliteracies, anti-oppression education, and teacher development.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
