Engages,

Danny Butt, Gabrielle de Vietri and Sean Dockray Systems of Solidarity: Alternative Pedagogies

Dates: Tuesday 13 June, 6-8pm

Where: Bus Projects, 25 Rokeby Street Collingwood
RSVP: info@busprojects.org.au

As part of our ongoing ‘Systems of Solidarity’ series, Bus Projects presents a discussion on the alternative forms of pedagogy that exist within artistic practice.

Featuring Danny Butt, Gabrielle de Vietri and Sean Dockray, this edition of ‘Systems of Solidarity’ invites speakers to reflect on their own pedagogical processes and their intersections with the broader field of teaching and learning. Benefiting from the panel’s complex artistic and research backgrounds, this discussion will explore the alternative ways of knowing that are generated by creative practice.

In this context, we can explore how artists’ research processes actively question and foster enquiry in which risk taking is central. In politically turbulent times, it is worth examining how creative practitioners are able to build systems of knowledge exchange that value curiosity, imagination, and open-mindedness. This in turn creates a fertile space for more co-constructive teaching which breaks down traditional education hierarchies to allow more dialectic learning between teachers, students and creative professionals.

These discussions are held within a layered, hierarchical, knowledge system based on eurocentric gallery, art market, art history, and art school models. Small-scale organisations like Bus Projects acknowledge that we are a result of, and continue to benefit from, this system. Yet, as an Artist-Run organisation, we recognise that we can play a role in change-making. The ‘Systems of Solidarity’ series opens up space of learning for both our organisation as well as our community.

Eschewing a moderator, this discussion will utilise a relay-interview structure where each speaker “interviews” each other before opening up to a broader discussion between all members.

Danny Butt coordinates the Master of Arts and Community Practice at Victorian College of the Arts and is a Research Associate in the Research Unit in Public Cultures at the University of Melbourne. His book ‘Artistic Research in the Future Academy’ will be published in July 2017. He is a member of Auckland-based art collective Local Time, whose work engages the dynamics of visitor and host in the context of mana whenua and discourses of indigenous self-determination.

Gabrielle de Vietri is a Melbourne-based artist with a concept-driven, socially-engaged collaborative practice. Her work has taken form as pedagogical systems, community events, interactive public performances, documents, invented languages, fictional historical insertions, lectures and gardens. She has carried out projects in non-traditional locations, and held exhibitions in major Australian institutions and internationally in public spaces, galleries and museums. Gabrielle is a current Sidney Myer Creative Fellow (2015-17). She is co-director with Will Foster of A Centre for Everything.

Sean Dockray is a Melbourne based artist, a founding director of the Los Angeles non-profit Telic Arts Exchange, and initiator of knowledge-sharing platforms, The Public School and Aaaaarg. His work has been included in the group exhibitions ‘Imaginary Accord’ at The Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, ‘Factory Fetish’ at West Space, Melbourne, ‘Vantage Point’ at the Substation, Melbourne, ‘Public Library’ at Württembergishcer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, ‘Wide Open School’ at the Hayward Gallery, London, ‘New Construction in Video Art’ at California Museum of Photography, Riverside and ‘Shadowboxing’ at the Royal College of Art, London.