From the life to the locked room: applying the Chaîne opératoire to the pedagogy of the copy

ABSTRACT

In response to the recommendations of the Coldstream report 1960), to qualify for validation, art courses across the UK engaged in a decade of restructuring and broadening of their course delivery. Emphasis was placed on the alignment of classical traditional methods and art technical skill along with Art History and later Complimentary Studies (1970). The balance of these relationships and what constituted technical processes had become less clearly defined. This paper explores whether between the years 1969 and 1973, the pedagogy of the copy continued to be instrumental within radical teaching projects, centered on and around St. Martins. Using the ‘A’ Course as a case study, how tutors collectively approached the development of alternative teaching methods, where the class itself became a site of a continual experimental process, is discussed. To explicate the teaching rational, a framework, in the form an Operative Sequence, is applied to a selection of projects that made up the course. Both the structure and methodology of their design and content are analyzed in order to ascertain whether they dispel a genealogy and technical memory in the form of the copy and if this can be considered to be both evolutionary and dynamic.

KEYWORDS:

• ‘A’ Course
• copy
• Chaîne opératoire
• mimesis
• pedagogy
• technology
• tool

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Elizabeth Wright is an artist and senior lecturer, 3D Pathway Leader on the BA Fine Art Course at CSM. Exhibiting internationally since 1995, research on mimesis and the copy informs her art practice. She has been commissioned to make both temporary and permanently sited art projects with curators working in the public realm, Locus + and Commissions East; inter-disciplinary research centers, Tyndall Centre and architectural practices, FAT and MUF. Recent exhibitions include: Atelier Amden, Switzerland; the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen, Germany and a forthcoming group exhibition in 2017 at the Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona, Spain.

Notes

1. The ‘A’ Course: An Inquiry 26–27 March 2010, Schedule devised by Garth Evans, Garth Jones, Peter Kardia and Anthony Davies at CSM Charing Cross Rd, London. ‘A’ Course Archive – (Mayday Rooms), an educational charity founded as a repository for historical material linked to social movements, experimental culture and the radical expression of marginalized figures and groups. The ‘A’ course was a unique pedagogic experiment founded by four members of St. Martins Staff, Peter Atkins, Garth Evans, Garth Jones and Peter Harvey, originally planned as a five-week project called the Locked room, which after the first year came to be known as the ‘A’ Course. This was a course that had a significant impact on what was taking place in British art education at the time.

2. Peter Atkins was later known as Peter Kardia.

3. In 1963, Frank Martin had applied for accreditation; this was only awarded to St. Martins in 1969, the equivalent of a degree qualification.

4. A2 studio was the name of the studio that the Locked Room and subsequent projects took place in.

5. Deacon makes reference to Donald Schon, Reith Lectures of 1970.