Designing Freedom

This article probes the possibility of creating anarchistic learning spaces within a neoliberal framework by presenting the case study of Critical Kinaesthetics, an experimental game that functions as a learning aid. The game strives to reconnect education with its essential meaning (to draw out each student’s individual capacities) and is intended to contrast neoliberal preoccupations with quantification and measurability, which lead to well-educated mediocrity. Anarchism is praxis from the bottom up. Critical Kinaesthetics revolves around a core concern within anarchist thought: to question the concept of individual agency, the ‘I’ and its embodiment within a social framework. It does this through the exploration of the social construction of gait (walking). The aim is to develop autonomous critical consciousness to learning by using critical practice within a sociopolitical agenda.

This article proposes and questions how a game space could be designed to enhance awareness of each individual student’s unique strengths to support the development of personal authenticity and individual autonomy within a neoliberal socio-political context. Through the game, students become both the basis and the drive for future change and social transformation in terms of true individual freedom. This is the anarchist agenda.

This essay is part of the studium generale research line The Future Art School. How can art education cultivate a rich and safe learning environment in which diverse voices are amplified, and where makers strive for a more just and inclusive society? Are we able to decolonise the curriculum to empower students to get rid of the dominant narratives and write new ones? Can we educate students to become change makers, as ArtEZ wants them to be? And what does this mean for the values and teaching standards that we are used to working with?