Throughout 2007, HOMEWORK will edit a series of issues of artwurl.org. The first issue includes texts and commissioned art projects that explore pedagogical art practices and the subject of artist as teacher and researcher.
The artists’ projects section presents contributions from Berit Noergaard (DK), Fritz Haeg and his students at Sundown School House (LA), Carla Herrera-Prats (MX/Boston), and Marisa Jahn/Erik Carver (Boston/NY) who responded to the call “the dog ate my homework": "The dog ate my homework".
The oldest excuse in the book; transparent, desperate and therefore an excuse that no one believes. It absolves the student of responsibility (as it is the fault of the beast), and suggests a disinterest in participation. In pedagogical artistic practices, how are the roles of teacher and student complicated? How do we choose what we do or don't teach/learn? What might "the dog ate my homework," or any other excuse, say about the relationship between teacher and student, artist and audience? What happens if you don't do your homework? Ultimately, what does the concept of homework mean to participants in pedagogical artistic practices, be they individual, collaborative, collective, and/or community-based?
The texts/interviews section presents contributions by artists and collaborative groups, who have explored ideas of alternative pedagogical models. This includes a text by Alex Villar who writes about the contemporary potential of the liberative pedagogical ideas of Paolo Friere; an interview with MFK who have initiated a university for women in Malmö; a text by artists Lise Skou and Andrea Creutz who recount their experiences as guest teachers in the sociology department at the Copenhagen University; and an interview between Rosten Woo of the Center for Urban Pedagogy and Damaris Reyes of Good Old Lower East Side on their collaboration on a television program about public housing.