The Turn to Experience in Contemporary Art: A Potentiality for Thinking Art Education Differently

Abstract

This article considers the turn to experience in contemporary art and examines its potentiality for thinking art education differently. This project should not be mistaken for what Hannah Arendt (1968) identified as “the extraordinary enthusiasm for what is new” (p. 176). Rather, its purpose is to pursue another possibility for art education that has the potential to shape the field in ways that correspond to the life worlds of individuals with whom we, as educators, work. In all that it enables and denies, the turn to experience in contemporary art has something to impart to teachers of art who, in their daily practices, are experience-producers as they define and regulate what is possible to teach and what is appropriate for their students to learn. Whether or not art teachers take up the potentiality of this turn to experience or translate it into art education practice is another matter. In the spirit of the artworks discussed, it is not the actuality of the potentiality that is of interest here. Rather, it is the very potentiality itself. The discussion of experience draws chiefly on the philosophical work of John Dewey and the artworks of Lee Mingwei, Carsten Höller, and Eddie Peake.