The Heckler’s Promise

From gluing audience members to their seats and purposefully selling the same ticket to more than one person, artists associated with the Historical Avant-Garde often sought to provoke and antagonise by employing disruption via interruptive processes. This paper responds to Claire Bishop’s call for more agonism (Bishop, 2004) by inserting the heckler as both method and object into art performance. It is a hybrid of practice and theory, statement and response, test and experiment; it is a combination of all these things because you can’t really envisage a heckler without taking him out for the night putting him in the world and observing the exchanges that take place. We think that practicing heckling has got to be worth the aggravation.  This paper seeks to do two things: first to explore the heckler as a ‘device’ for reassessing the potential of interruption in democratic exchange, in particular in relation to contemporary theories of art and participation and second to try it out; to put the heckler at the centre of an artwork. In short, we propose a rethinking of the heckler.  Part 1: Heckle, Hiss, Howl and Holler asks if there is something worth considering in the process of heckling for democratic exchange and, Part 2: Contract, Collaboration, Countdown and Confrontation strikes out to see what happens when you present an artwork that trials a performance about heckling via the act of heckling.  The inhospitable performance Contract with a Heckler demonstrates a complex knitting of theory and practice whereby argument is supported by the undertaking of action (by the necessity of experiencing interruption in practice) and reveals working with interruption on a theoretical, practical and emotional level can be exciting, provocative and dangerous. Exploring contractual agency through hostipitality (Derrida, 2000) wherein a host may be as hostile as she is hospitable, this performance reimagines the event of performance as an event of (in)hospitality by embodying an ambivalent conviviality and employing heckling to disrupt convivial participation (Bourriaud, 1998)

Collaborators and hecklers: Performative pedagogy and interruptive processes

Arguing for the positive disruptive nature of interruption, this paper concentrates on my current performative and pedagogic usage of interruption within my teaching as the means to achieve three aims: 1) develop aspects of practice discussed in my doctoral thesis ‘Tactics of Interruption: Provoking Participation in Performance Art’ (Campbell 2016) related to the focused usage of interruptive processes in contemporary art practice (Arlander 2009: 2) provide students with direct experience of how interruption may command immediate reaction and force collaborative means of working, i.e. collective survival tactics to deal with interruption; and 3) theorise, articulate and demonstrate how interruption relates to critical reflection (on the part of both student and teacher), extending the ideas of Maggi Savin-Baden (2007) to propose interruption as reflection. To achieve these aims, the paper discusses how I have implemented interruption into learning activity design and evidences how I have created activities that aim to help students understand collaborative learning in cross-disciplinary projects through an effective use of realia (interruption is part of real life). I discuss one first year teaching seminar at Loughborough University in March 2015 (and subsequent related iterations) combining performance, fine art and collaboration methodologies where students directly engaged in a range of activities not displaced from their own life experiences; there was heavy student engagement in digital technologies, and interruption. The main outcomes of the teaching session support and go beyond the aims by relating to: a) experiential learning related to the interplay between ‘collaboration’ and ‘interruption’; b) performative pedagogy and inclusion; c) the interplay between teaching, liveness and interruption; and d) performative pedagogy and the exchange of power relation

The classroom observer: unwanted interruption or welcome witness?

For many teachers, classroom observation can be a painful interruption/intrusion (Wragg, 1994:15) in the flow of a lesson’s delivery in terms of facilitating a meaningful, creative and enjoyable learning environment that is supportive to both learner and teacher. Whilst I acknowledge that observation can be a daunting experience, eliciting fear and dread at having someone, an ‘intruder’ (Minton, 2005:18) who is not normally part of the audience, watch and scrutinise an individual’s teaching style (O’Leary, 2014:62), I argue for the positive promotion of classroom observation (Double and Martin, 1998) and stress the benefits of ‘develop[ing] personal skills of evaluation and self-appraisal’ (1998:162). The discussion of an observed teaching session that I gave to a group of first year Fine Art undergraduates at Loughborough University in 2015 whose overall purpose/aim of the session was to familiarise students with core issues relating to the usage of sketchbooks as a common staple within contemporary art practice, helps to support my argument that the positive aspects of classroom peer observation (as a live process) outweigh the negatives and can in fact be supportive in providing an opportunity for teachers to realise or reinforce (O’Leary, 2014:62) the strengths in what they are doing. This is in addition to providing a window for the teacher to gain critical constructive feedback from often a more experienced colleague, who has probably at many points during their own teaching career, experienced similar moments of anxiety, positivity and reflection. The danger and the unanticipated events that ‘liveness’ can throw up is half the excitement of teaching. Indeed, ‘coping with the unexpected is an important part of successful teaching’ (Race, 2009:20). The write-up style that I adopt relates to a three-stage teaching process that I designed in my doctoral thesis (Campbell, 2016b) – Anticipation, Action, and Analysis. This extends to an existing model of reflective practice (Rolfe, 2001) and has been described as an ‘original, practical and imaginative way of demonstrating reflective practice’ (Newbold, pers. comm. 2015)

Cinematic interruptions

Dr Lee Campbell, University of Lincoln, explores the potential of mobile technology to produce an immersive and participatory cinema experience

Anticipation, action and analysis: A new methodology for practice as research

This paper proposes a new methodology for practice-as-research: “Anticipation, Action, and Analysis”. Critical evaluation of my performance artwork Lost for Words functions as the vehicle to describe Anticipation, Action, and Analysis and to theorise, articulate and demonstrate how slapstick can offer useful insights into the operations of the physical body in participative art performance that go beyond abstract theorisation. Scrutinising and examining slapstick’s performativity in relation to the subject of participation (Bourriaud 1998; Bishop 2006) within Performance Art, this paper concentrates discussion on my performance Lost for Words (2011) as a performance that by making use of slapstick as an extreme physical bodily interruptive process, really supports the problems and difficulties involved in participation within Performance Art. My definition of slapstick in this performance relates to undertaking a set of actions which forces participants’ bodies to interrupt how it normally behaves. The paper achieves this by addressing what happens when, as part of the structural framework of the performance, interruptive processes related to bodily incongruity and repetition (Heiser, 2008) are engineered into activities undertaken by participants engaging in physical and bodily processes. Defining the term collectivity as meaning being a member of a group of people with possibly shared experiences, interests and motivations, the paper also amplifies consideration of how the performance can be used to provide useful insights into the importance that collectivity and conviviality (Bourriaud 1998; Clayton 2007) plays within participatory processes. By way of contrast, the paper explores how the anti-social nature of Schadenfreude (Glenn 2003; Miller, 1993; Svendsen 2010 et al.) can also play its part as well as the, as argued, contradictory nature of hospitality (Derrida 2000) in examining how the performer and audience relation can be construed as host/guest

You don't need eyes to see, you need vision: performative pedagogy, technology and teaching art to students with vision impairment

This paper links experiential learning and Performance Art with public pedagogy on sight/visual negation and contributes to knowledge by drawing together performance as pedagogy to demonstrate how teaching styles can accommodate those with vision impairment and adapt (performance) art to make it more accessible. In so doing it seeks to develop inclusion for students with a vision impairment. Intermeshing practice, teaching and research around issues of access, participation and education, it builds upon previous work exploring teaching strategies for the visually impaired within contemporary art practice (Axel and Levent, 2003; Hayhoe, 2008; Allan, 2014) and shares useful adaptations to help make learning about art more accessible for students with vision impairment. It also sheds light upon aspects of the question, ‘What are the basics that an educator needs to know when designing art programs for persons with visual impairment?’ (Axel and Levent, 2003: 51). This paper can be read as a benchmark for critical engagement in its attempt to combine performative pedagogy with an emphasis on technological means, access and visual impairment. While vision is favoured over other senses (Jonas, 1954) and with the increasing importance of digital and virtual realities as a major component of students’ lives, never has there been a time in which the meanings of access are so broadened via technological mediation—that draw on all senses—to which artworks, as suggested, respond. Relying on all senses becomes an aspect of public pedagogy that is more inclusive

Technoparticipation: Intermeshing performative pedagogy and interruption

Arguing for the positive disruptive nature of interruption, this article concentrates on my current performative and pedagogic usage of Skype in order to promote the positive aspects of interruptive elements within performative pedagogy. Referring to technoparticipation, this article explains how teaching and learning activities that combine performance, participation, and technology within the learning environment can be punctuated with varying degrees of interruption that are structurally engineered into their framework. This practice as research is supported by a Loughborough University Teaching Innovation Award and draws together discussions from within Performance Studies and the ever-growing discipline of E-learning. Skype as interruption is addressed in terms of both theory and practice in order to argue that its interruptive capacities are useful in unpacking key concepts relating to the terms ‘embodiment’ and ‘disembodiment’,‘virtuality’ and ‘physicality’, and ‘absence’ and ‘presence’ amongst others. This article focuses on an instance of technoparticipation practice that took place in Summer 2015 at University College Cork. The project was put forward as prime evidence of how technology and the operations of interruption can collectively be used to further understand the aforementioned concepts. The writing that follows explains how the write-up preceding, during and post event at UCC relates to a three-stage teaching process. This process - Anticipation, Action, and Analysis – was designed as an extension to an existing model of reflective practice (Rolfe 2001)

Technoparticipation: the use of digital realia in arts education

Technoparticipation is a project that started in 2015, which aims to explore how ‘realia’ can be integrated into arts education. The word realia refers to objects from everyday life, used to improve students' understanding of real life situations, and ‘facilitate[s] the [creative] process’ (Piazzoli, 2017). This article explores applications as everyday digital realia – Skype, Textwall and TitanPad – to consider the benefits and drawbacks of using realia in the classroom. These tools facilitate a wider consideration of other digital applications that could be employed as digital realia in teaching and how, as Paige Abe and Nickolas A. Jordan suggest, ‘using social media in the classroom creates a new pattern of social encounter’ (2013, p.17). Notes by the editor: Reviewing the state of digital technologies in art and design education almost ten years ago I noted the creative potential of computer mediated communications but observed the lack of critical research into its application (Radclyffe-Thomas, 2008). Lee Campbell is a Lecturer in Academic Support and Fine Art whose research paper on his ‘Technoparticipation’ project takes the reader through several teaching interventions applying digital realia into a fine art context. He provides practical examples and conceptual analysis of the potential for inclusivity, collaboration, reflective practice and personalised learning experiences. Along with multiple examples of practice what is particularly novel in Lee’s approach is the appropriation of technological mishaps or ‘communicative fragmentation’ as ‘realia’

eHealth interventions for people with chronic kidney disease

This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (Intervention). The objectives are as follows: This review aims to look at the benefits and harms of using eHealth interventions in the CKD population