Pedagogical Factory: Exploring Strategies for an Educated City — Chicago — July 22 – Sept. 23

The disOrientation Guide on display in Chicago.  Members of 3Cs will be in Chicago to present the work on Saturday, Sept. 15, 1-3pm in a workshop on “How We Make a Disorientation Guide to Our University”.

For more information

More information on the workshop:

Saturday 9.15
How We Make a Disorientation Guide to Our University
w/ Local University Activists
1-3pm

In recent years many students and professors have turned their research interests towards the university itself. They have considered how to translate the activism and critique that is generally encouraged and supported when projected outward on the world, into a more inward practice that identifies the particular political economy of today’s university system. What role and responsibilities do universities have in the urban spaces they inhabit, in the knowledge economies they facilitate, in the concepts about which they produce research, and the contracts they receive and provide? Today we will work with students from several local universities, including Northwestern and University of Chicago, to talk about one of the works in the Pedagogical Factory exhibit which displays such self-critical research about the US academic system in the form of a “Disorientation Guide” to UNC Chapel Hill. We will use this work as a starting point to discuss the possibilities of creating similar initiatives in Chicago academic contexts. Get in touch with factory07@gmail.com if you are interested in participating.

More information on the exhibit:

July 22 – September 23, 2007 Gallery 1

The Stockyard Institute and friends
Gallery 1

The Stockyard Institute will initiate an interactive exhibition titled Pedagogical Factory, using the Hyde Park Art Center as a site to critically explore the intersection between art, education, and the city. Working with other artists, collaboratives, and groups, such as The Center for Urban Pedagogy (New York), rum46 (Denmark), Think Tank (Philadelphia), Artlink (UK), and AREA Chicago Art, Research, Education & Activism (Chicago), to name a few, the Stockyard Institute will transform the gallery space into a temporary factory that will design and implement an extensive series of programs and events throughout the two month project. From this exciting, collaborative stage, Pedagogical Factory will interrogate the overlap between education, economics, art, and activism, creating a venue to explore alternatives to traditional notions of education and social art.

The Hyde Park Art Center will act as a hub for this lively exhibition, which through a portable research center, mobile audio studio, radio broadcasts, free school supply exchange, radical library, lectures, performances, and programs will expand out to the extended public, embracing audience interaction and feedback. The “Factory Manual,” an updated art textbook for high schools, will be compiled throughout the exhibition, producing a manual that will become available to high schools in the fall 2008. AREA Chicago and the Stockyard Institute will further collaborate for the “How We Learn” issue of AREA, which will publish a piece from the Pedagogical Factory and be released on the final day of the exhibition. By actively exploring proposals to art education, Pedagogical Factory not only offers visitors the beginning tools to question and modify educational systems, but also itself becomes a site for alternative, collaborative, and free-exchange learning.

The Stockyard Institute is a Chicago-based artist project led by Jim Duignan. Focusing on the intersection between education, art, activism, and the media, the Stockyard Institute collaborates with artists, writers, and various cultural workers to develop projects with youth and community residents, such as Designing a Gang-Proof Suit (2000), a design and sculpture project with youth of the Back of the Yards community of Southside Chicago, LOCO COOL Radio Project (2002), an experimental audio project developed and broadcast with youth, and the Austin Community History Book (2004). Projects have been exhibited and published in the US and internationally. Jim Duignan received an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is currently a professor of Visual Arts Education at DePaul University.