'Art in Society: Education Changing Institutions' - a pre-conference seminar on the 29.-30. of April 2015.

The aesthetic experience has since Kant been rooted in the pleasure of exercising a free judgment. In 'The Aesthetical Education of Man', Schiller traces the field of aesthetics as a space where a free and independent mind is trained. Contemporary thinkers are reaching back to the foundational paradigm of aesthetics, arguing the role of aesthetics in correlation to critical thinking and as a production site of new forms of knowledge (Sommer 2014, Rancière 2002, 2009). Contingently, artists, curators and theorists are working with participatory-based forms of art, seeing the aesthetic experience in terms of learning (Bishop 2012, O'Neill 2010, Rogoff 2009). The pre-conference seminar 'Education Changing Institutions' addresses the overlapping areas of art and education as an institutional frame for teaching and researching art, where contemporary artworks and applied art projects are seen as sites of learning. The pre-conference here suggested will present and discuss art practices that unfold in pragmatic contexts where multiple forms of knowledge intersect and where interdisciplinary approaches are necessary as part of a 'contemporary art didactic' (Aure 2006, Christensen-Scheel 2013). Through the epistemological insights shared during the seminar, art education will be approached both as ways of acquiring new knowledge and as a field where knowledge from different disciplines converge and expand (Varto 2013). Education in this context is much wider than a classroom situation: By discussing art practices that are concerned with the emancipation of the individual as well as the potential of art as a public form in which participation and civic responsibility is performed, 'Education Changing Institutions' aims at addressing learning in a wider societal context, indicating concrete interaction forms between art and society, education and worklife.