Afterword: inexhaustible cultural learning

On ferme les yeux des morts avec douceur; c’est aussi avec douceur qu’il faut ouvrir les yeux des vivants.¹

Mons, the 2015 European Capital of Culture, opened five new museums and a concert hall in the same year,² providing a challenge for me to take a closer look at the artistic agenda of this material cultural explosion at the Mons exhibition sites, locations marked by a hybridity derived from the work-related migration of the Industrial Era (i.e. coal mining). Moreover, the initiatives didn’t stop at the borders of Mons but expanded to, among others, Charleroi, Namur, Brussels, and Valenciennes. The partner programmes involved Belgian and international artists, contemporary and classical art, museum projects, installations, town walks (street-corner creations), graffiti, and so on. I visited three exhibitions: La salle des pendus, a Gesamtkunstwerk by the French visual artist Christian Boltanski calling to mind the coal miners’ cloakroom, and exploring themes of memory, reminiscence, the unconscious, childhood, and death; Atopolis (a title alluding to the ideas of the Martinican writer Edouard Glissant who has philosophised on both identity and migration), a contemporary art exhibition presenting a group of artists interested in phenomena of circulation, diaspora, and cultural dislocation, installing an atopolis, or a proposal for an ideal city, connected to everyplace, or anyplace³ and Rops/Fabre-Facing Time in Namur, in which Félicien Rops posthumously invited the innovative visual artist Jan Fabre to tour his city, taking in museums and outdoor spaces. In addition to the open museum concept, already firmly in place for several decades, and establishing a clear link to the outside world, and the concept of the “imaginary museum” that intrudes upon the artwork’s genesis and its process of development, the three exhibitions also had their creative interaction with time in common.⁴ These are “a-historical” exhibitions, detached from traditional chronological arrangement, a phenomenon that also started in the 1980s, aiming to reveal resemblances between works from what may be distant periods and cultures.⁵ This is best illustrated by the Fabre/Rops imaginary dialogue and the configuration around Boltanski’s Les registres du Grand-Hornu, commemorating 3500 miners. By means of photographs, objects, and light – the traces of disappeared bodies – the French artist tries to conciliate individual and collective memory, the border between absence and presence, and challenges time and forgetting (e.g. the pile of miners’ coats evoking association with the stacked clothes of Jews murdered in Nazi concentration camps).

The three exhibitions illustrate the fundamental changes undergone by museums since the 1980s (both concepts have increasingly become interchangeable). Museums have repositioned themselves in today’s culture, having become highly visible in our day-to-day social environment, among others by involving children in museum activities.⁶ On the other hand, their historical purpose, the acquisition, preservation, and dissemination of their collections (cf. the “metacultural operations”⁷), compounded with the valorisation of these acts for an audience (the ideal of edification through education and exposure to culture), and the promotion of scientific and artistic research, has come under tremendous pressure from a versatile range of multimedia. Museums must continually reaffirm their purpose and existence, not only in having to attract new groups by staging spectacular exhibitions as veritable blockbusters, among others, but also by transforming themselves into creative centres that offer individual and collective experiences which satisfy the “culture of experience”, all the while without sacrificing scientific standards.⁸ The museum may become a true hackerspace in the not too distant future.⁹

The different contents of the three aforementioned exhibitions were actually examples of cultural learning: in the way they deal with past, present, and future; in the posing of life questions in the sense of who we are (the philosophical bias); in the ebb and flow between personal constructs and collective existence; in the interplay of emotions and thoughts between artist and viewer; in the critical assessment of what we know (the point at which art and science meet); and all this with account taken of serendipity and the possibility of creative transformation. As a researcher one gets the feeling, or almost tends to assert, that artists do better at cultural learning than the more formal structures that were designed for the purpose. Add “fine arts” to the mix and this could be said to illustrate a quote from Herman Paul, Associate Professor of Historical Theory at Leiden University: “Don’t forget, however, that some of the most profound insights into human ways of dealing with the past are not to be found in journal articles, but in films, novels and poems”.¹⁰ For example, Boltanski’s Les registres du Grand-Hornu is an example of cultural learning, but both artwork and artist are, of course, objects of cultural learning, open to all kinds of interpretation by solitary, self-guided visitors and gallery teachers alike. And with this, the meaningful encounter between audience and artwork, we arrive at an extremely important sector of cultural learning: gallery teaching, museum education. Though seldom mentioned in this special issue, even the professionals acknowledge a lacuna:

Although most art museums in their founding documents define education as intrinsic to their mission, very few educational initiatives are ever discussed in the available historical accounts of the institution’s founding and growth. In the course of our research we quickly realised that museum teaching is a century-old practice without a history to call its own. This history deserves to be written.¹¹

One of the great merits of this special issue is its focus on the definition, theory, method, and social context of cultural learning, following the way outlined in an article entitled “Cultural Learning: From Pedagogy to Knowledge Exchange” by Natasha Macnab, Richard Clay, and Ian Grosvenor,¹² which actually complements an earlier and very thoughtful article by Kevin Myers and Ian Grosvenor, “Cultural Learning and Historical Memory: A Research Agenda”.¹³ The latter covers the entire range of cultural learning, goes far beyond recent thought on exhibitions and museums – further too than the articles presented here – and could conceivably serve as an “Afterword”, or compulsory reading, for anyone who treads the path of cultural learning.

However, the following question requires our consideration: where, in the history of education, does the current, heightened interest in cultural learning come from? The effect of the Horizon 2020 European research programme (the quest for research funding) comes immediately to mind, but it is probably due, more generally, to heritage rage, living in an increasingly “patrimonialised” environment,¹⁴ and it cannot be denied that we are drifting on a societal stream, attempting to control the risk society, to which the authors of the aforementioned publications have already referred and in respect of which the Cultural Learning Alliance has taken up positions.¹⁵ The two articles on this inspiring topic prove the history of education’s enormous resilience as an open discipline, reinvigorated by the authors’ broad research agenda. The Cultural Learning Alliance tells us that the call for culture/cultural learning is stronger than ever, due to current social and economic pressures.

Indeed, there is a general observation (albeit a chicken and egg dilemma): if the world were to go pear-shaped, there would be an enormous need for “beauty”, people would seek solace in music (cf. the well-known saying that “music soothes the soul”), people would realise that culture educates and produces good citizens,¹⁶ or, as in the wake of the Paris attack on Charlie Hebdo (7 January 2015), people would identify culture, as did a teacher from one of the “suburbs”, as a cure for young people living in social poverty.¹⁷ The same sort of sounds emerged from Brussels/Molenbeek too, the so-called capital of terrorist plotting, “a hellhole”, after the series of Paris attacks of 13 November 2015. In an interview, the director of the La Monnaie/De Munt theatre, where 38 different nationalities, cultures, and languages work alongside to get productions on stage, spoke of how a lack of education and culture pushes people further and further apart, with extreme consequences, whereas education and culture are, in his opinion, designed to increase our awareness of the society to which we belong and make society stronger, more coherent, and more empathetic through our own individual talents.¹⁸ The mayor of Molenbeek actually entitled her new year’s message “Plus que jamais, la culture!” (Culture, now more than ever!),¹⁹ while at the same time arguing for more repressive measures.

Paradoxically enough, the government is cutting into budgets set aside for culture and forcing the founders of cultural initiatives to seek funding from private partners. It is nothing new for society to be dominated by market principles, or for a majority to be in support of this. It looks like the winner-takes-all economy, liberalisation, the adoption of neoliberal logic, with art flippers ready to pounce, is set to continue for quite some time.²⁰ This may constitute a social impasse; however, on the other hand (and this is hardly a novel occurrence), it may have the side effect of allowing off spaces to blossom, in no way suffering from a lack of imagination. “Bubbles”? Or should we attribute these initiatives to our hypermodern capitalist times, hyper-consumption, individualism as a break with the past and the leaning towards instant gratification (“homo consomator”), as described by French philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky?²¹ As opposed to a Peter Sloterdijk, for example, the German cultural philosopher whose picture of modern man was bleaker – one finds oneself teetering on a precipice²² – or the British poet/philosopher of education, Peter Abbs, who took a very dim view of consumerism,²³ the somewhat more optimistic Lipovetsky attempted, as both supporter and critic of capitalism, to set its excesses to the side and give it legitimacy as the only, albeit flawed economic model in hypermodern times and to civilise it by according the state a more active role. The image of capitalism as an all-consuming Moloch in a world of chaos made way for one of a two-faced Janus:

Paradoxe: plus s’impose l’exigence de rationalité chiffrée du capitalisme et plus celui-ci donne une importance de premier plan aux dimensions créatives, intuitives, émotionnelles […]. [A]près le moment industriel productiviste, voici l’âge de l’hypermodernité, tout à la fois “reflexive” et émotionnelle-esthétique.

By this Lipovetsky was not implying that capitalism would act less aggressively, but that in hypermodern times the systems of production, distribution, and consumerism will have modelled themselves, the everyday societal environment will have composed itself, the aesthetic-emotional, affective, imaginary dimension will have become central to brand competition, the economy will have become aestheticised and capitalism will have become an artist. He calls it “le capitalisme artiste ou créatif transesthétique”, in which the boundaries have eroded between art and industry, style and amusement, art and triviality, art for the elite and mass culture. Art no longer appears in its pure, autonomous form, but is mixed with commercial logic, utilitarianism, and entertainment. Market-averse elitist Art no longer exists; the aesthetic object is both a mass product and a democratic lifestyle.²⁴

It may be that the foundation of Lipovetsky’s arguments is at times strung rather flimsily together, that he employs a certain “flou artistique” and neglects the value of the past, but his impressionist sociology reveals a keen spirit of discernment when it comes to observing social phenomena in a given timeframe.²⁵ Historical research in cultural learning can flourish naturally in a climate where popular culture has most probably emerged as the most powerful educational force in contemporary culture. This is especially so, given that history is eagerly consumed by society,²⁶ and, as we see in the article by Myers and Grosvenor, contributes to the formation of identity among young people in formal schooling, for example. This brings us back to the heart of the problem of historical time, on which we touched at the beginning of this “Afterword”. Apparently, the artists mentioned are unaffected. But what about historians, the historians of education who labour on cultural learning in these hypermodern times, in which the future shrivels before the accelerating present and the past expands? How will we approach these subjects in a period whose concept of time evolved with the memory boom toward the non-linear, reversible, and progressive, and in which past, present, and future invade each other’s boundaries?²⁷ It is possible, simply and responsibly, chronologically, and by profiting from years of solidly developed historical literature, to maintain the safe distance needed, adopt the position of the so-called impartial observer, and keep (competitive) memory and history separate, at the risk of becoming provincial. Or we can take a more problem-solving approach to things and, as an active participant, write a more involved (contemporaneous) history, one still viewed by some historians with a disapproving eye. Another possibility, as French historian Patrick Boucheron argued in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France at the end of 2015, and in his publications²⁸ is to search for peace and calm in history, far away from the lightning fast times, and to try to find ways of understanding that layered or contradictory past on which our society’s present is built. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s antinomic concepts of trace and aura, Boucheron tells us that history can only be contemporaneous. In line with his research his lecture speaks of the “Histoire des pouvoirs en Europe occidentale, XIIIe-XVIe siècle”, but it is no coincidence that Boucheron includes a reflection on the current “pouvoirs de l’histoire”, in which he gives free rein to his “engagement critique”. Where the authors of this special issue place themselves, or indeed where the readers position the authors, or any conceivable hybrid of the two, I leave to the authors and readers. Could this not be another aspect of cultural learning?

Notes on contributor

Frank Simon is professor emeritus at Ghent University (Belgium). His research deals with the history of pre-school and primary education in Belgium (education policy, teacher unions, the teaching profession), educationalisation processes, everyday educational practice, classroom and curriculum history, education and cultural heritage, and progressive education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Frank Simon
Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Social Work and Social Pedagogy,
Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
[email protected]

Notes

¹ Jean Cocteau, ed., Le Coq et l’Arlequin (Paris: Éditions de la Sirène, 1918), 20.

² http://www.mons2015.eu/en (accessed 11 November 2015). The “Afterword” was written in the second half of December 2015 and the beginning of 2016. Sincere thanks to Frederik Herman for his comments.

³ See Raphaël Pirenne and Sébastien Bizet, eds., Atopolis (Brussels: Wiels/(SIC), 2015).

⁴ See André Malraux, Le musée imaginaire (Paris: Gallimard, 1965). 

⁵ Debora J. Meijers, “The Museum and the A-historical Exhibition,” in Thinking about Exhibitions, ed. R. Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson, and S. Nairne (1996; London: Taylor & Francis e-library, 2005), 5–14.

⁶ See Hermann Lübbe, Zeit-Erfahrungen: Sieben Begriffe zur Beschreibung moderner Zivilisationsdynamik (Mainz/Stuttgart: Steiner, 1996), 20–1.

⁷ Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “World Heritage and Cultural Economics,” in Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations, ed. Ivan Karp, Corinne A. Kratz, Lynn Szwaja, and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 162.

⁸ Anke Te Heesen, Theorien des Museums zur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius, 2012), 9–17.

⁹ See Michel Lallement, L’âge du faire: Hacking, travail, anarchie. (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2015).

¹⁰ Herman Paul, Key Issues in Historical Theory (New York: Routledge, 2015), xiii.

¹¹ Rika Burnham and Elliott Kai-Kee, Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as Experience (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011), 2.

¹² https://citiespitch.wordpress.com/project-outputs/ (accessed 11 November 2015).

¹³ Encounters/Encuentros/Rencontres on Education 15 (2014): 3–21.

¹⁴ See Marc Depaepe and Frank Simon, “It’s All about Interpretation: Discourses at Work in Educational Museums. The Case of Ypres,” in Educational Research: Discourses of Change and Changes of Discourse, ed. Paul Smeyers and Marc Depaepe (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), 207–22.

¹⁵ www.culturallearningalliance.org.uk (accessed 11 November 2015).

¹⁶ Karen Stanworth, Visibly Canadian: Imaging Collective Identities in the Canadas, 1820–1910 (Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2014), 67.

¹⁷ Marie S. Lamoureux, Je ne capitule pas: Après les attentats de Charlie Hebdo, à quoi ça sert un prof ? (Paris: Don Quichotte, 2015).

¹⁸ Brussels 19h58–01/01/2016 http://www.brusselnieuws.be/nl/video/tvbrussel/; http://www.demunt.be/nl/353 (accessed 1 February, 2016).

¹⁹ Cuturele Agenda Culturel, Jan–Mar 2016, Sint-Jans-Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, 2.

²⁰ See Robrecht Vanderbeeken, Buy buy art. De vermarkting van kunst en cultuur (Antwerpen: EPO, 2015). [Buy buy art. The marketisation of art and culture] (Antwerp: EPO, 2015).

²¹ See Gilles Lipovetsky, L'Ère du vide (Paris: Gallimard, 1983); Gilles Lipovetsky, L'empire de l'éphémère (Paris: Gallimard, 1987); Gilles Lipovetsky and Sébastien Charles, Les Temps hypermodernes (Paris: Grasset & Fasquelle, 2004).

²² Peter Sloterdijk, Die schrecklichen Kinder der Neuzeit. Über das anti-genealogische Experiment der Moderne (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014).

²³ Peter Abbs, Against the Flow: Education, the Art and Postmodern Culture (Abingdon: Routledge, 2003).

²⁴ Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy, L’esthétisation du monde. Vivre à l'âge du capitalisme artiste (Paris: Gallimard, 2013), Kindle locations 65, 78–9, 86–8, 575–84, 714, 1022–25, 1151–54, 7644 (accessed 26 January 2016).

²⁵ Vincent Citot, “Les temps hypermodernes, de Gilles Lipovetsky,” Le Philosophoire 22 (2004): 184–8, www.cairn.info/revue-le-philosophoire-2004-1-page-184.htm.

²⁶ See Jerome De Groot, Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).

²⁷ See Berber Bevernage and Chris Lorenz, “Breaking up Time: Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future,” Storia della Storiografia. Rivista internazionale 63, no. 1 (2013): 31–50; Chris Lorenz, “Blurred Lines: History, Memory and the Experience of Time,” International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 2, no. 1 (2014): 43–62; Marc Depaepe, “The Ten Commandments of Good Practices in History of Education Research,” Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Historiographie 16, no. 1 (2010): 31–4.

²⁸ http://www.college-de-france.fr/site/patrick-boucheron/inaugural-lecture-2015-12-17-18h00.htm; see also Patrick Boucheron, Faire profession d'historien (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2010).