School Play

We are casually making a school play about an art school, while working at an art school. “Causally making” is important since we do not want this to entail more work. The “while working” is important because it emphasises what Stefano Harney and Fred Moten call a necessary “criminal relation to the university” in that we might be seen to be doing our artwork “on the job” so to speak. Consequently, this “casually making” art “on the job” might be an interesting way of navigating the little time left for making art as art teachers. Whilst breaking down hierarchies between artists, teachers and students it also blurs the lines between teaching, theory and practice – they become as one simultaneous. The school play is important to some of us because at some point of our lives it gave us a reason to live when we thought we might not want to. But it is also a construct through which we can imagine and importantly put into practice an alternative to what already is, while also critically grappling with the questions that our mirror school throws up. The school play produces a doubling of our school and ourselves – a body extension that becomes our accomplice in imagining an alternative. One thing the school play is good at is being inauthentic and this is important in showing up any retrograde “return to authenticity” that criticism of the neoliberal university might risk reproducing.

Our presentation thus takes the form of a 20-minute school play about casually making a school play about an art school, while working at an art school. There will be make-shift props, lines spoken aloud and in unison, maybe songs, and definitely bad makeup. It will also, we hope, not only get us through the school term, but also activate our collective imagination and remind us why we are art teachers all along!

• Organisation