VIRTUAL: Applying Education
Abstract
Since 2018, at the Degree in Visual Arts, we have promoted the practice of walking as a pedagogical methodology. In this article we would like to share the experiences and practices developed and critically question these approaches, observing power relations. In a teaching-learning process we believe that we learn with each other surrounded by the world (FREIRE,1987) and so, as teachers and researchers we believe that we learn with the students, in practice, and in artistic-scientific research, in a dialogue between theory and practice. By promoting moments of sharing, namely of individual experiences or group activations, points and links are built between the self and the group, and new practices emerge or develop. Because walking requires the participation of the group, the collective and the other, it promotes the construction of collaborative and collective actions or exercises. These qualities (perception, collaboration, “I”, group) are of particular interest to us because they allow us to apply pedagogical methodologies which question ideas of power, knowledge and hierarchies. Walking makes it possible to reorganise the power relations between the subjects of the actions by questioning their roles and learning. Applying Jean Houssaye’s pedagogical triangle as a tool for analysis, we can recognise how walking questions the relationship between teacher/student/knower: the three vertices are in constant rotation, in an action between practice/theory, experience/knowing, individual/collective subject. It is from the walk as an aesthetic experience and artistic methodology that we are individually moving with the whole.
Natacha Antão is a painter, researcher at Landscape, Heritage and Territory Laboratory and assistant professor at the School of Architecture, Art and Design at the University of Minho, since 2006. Has a PhD in Fine Arts – Drawing, under the theme “Colour in the creative process” (an investigation on the space of colour in drawing), having kept the phenomenon of colour central in her work. Her most recent interests focus on artistic and research practices through walking, developing since 2018 the experimental laboratory The Walking Body.
Mónica Faria is a sculpture and pedagogue, has a PhD in Art Education at FBAUP (2016). She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, Art and Design of the University of Minho. Researcher at the Laboratory of Landscapes, Heritage and Territory. She participated in the artistic residence Peninsulares – Contextile/Estúdio Índigo/Museu Nacional de Artes Decorativas Madrid (2021). Since 2018, she has been developing and coordinating the research project “na volta” that works and reflects on artistic methodologies for women.