Output details

Inhabiting the language of the Institution: how artists, teachers and students are occupying the institutional rhetoric which surrounds them

Dutton’s paper concerns processes of de-institutionalisation as the primary focus of his art practice.

Context:

Two of Dutton’s previous papers formed the basis for this research. These were delivered at Athens Institute for Education and Research’s 1st and 2nd Annual International Conferences of Visual and Performing Arts ('Clueless. Contradictions, Malapropisms and Tensions within a Contemporary Art Practice' (2010) and 'Strategies of Doubt and Refusal in a Contemporary Art Practice' (2011)). The latter, he presented at 'Creativity, Play and the Imagination Across Disciplines' conference, Columbia University, New York (2011).

Process and Insight:

Dutton discusses the rise in the number of artists’ groups setting themselves up as some form of educational project. He suggests that where artist-teachers may once have rubbed up against the institution from within, that this is no longer possible and that the artist/student/teachers are occupying the institutions’ linguistical and rhetorical frameworks instead of its architecture. He outlines a neutralisation of the neo-liberal educational project by using other examples of artists’ projects, such as Inga Zimprich’s 'Faculty of Invisibility' in which the nomenclature of the educational/research institution of knowledge production is inhabited by production of the unquantifiable.

Sharing:

Dutton delivered 'Inhabiting the language of the Institution: how artists, teachers and students are occupying the institutional rhetoric which surrounds them' at Teachers’ Academy, 5th ELIA, Porto (2012). This paper was then used by Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts’ Professor Christoph Lang in his book 'Modus Modul' (9783956450426). It formed the basis of Dutton’s professorial lecture 'The Artists’ Institute and the Institute of Art' and with Dr Alec Shepley for their joint papers, 'The Artists’ Institute and the Institute of Art, a place which is not yet a place' (8th Arts Into Society Conference, Budapest, 2013) and 'The Institute of Ruin' ('Sensuous Knowledge' 7, Bergen, 2013). http://www.elia-artschools.org/activities/teachers-academy-2012-porto-/presenters/steve-dutton