Learning on the Run: From Psycho-Modernism to Fugitive Sociality

Abstract

Abstract Two exhibition and research projects, Creativity Exercises and Back to the Sandbox, are united by the history of reform pedagogy, Friederich Fröbel, and the legacy of the Bauhaus. The books related to the projects explore didactic and participatory art, questioning how to teach art, how to reform or radicalize education, and what participatory art practices share with pedagogy. The centerpiece of the first project is the work of Miklós Erdély and Dora Maurer, specifically the classes they organized at the Ganz-MAVAG factory in Budapest from 1975–1977. Although framed as part of an international turn toward creativity research during the cold war, a framing that crosses any East/West divide, the workshops and related projects reveal an interest in the psychology of creativity, focusing on the social subjects produced as Bauhaus-style education turned inside out. The second publication uses the sandbox as an object lesson and figure of thought to learn from the past of reform education while looking to the future. Although both projects highlight the contradictions and constraints of pedagogy, they succeed where they provide direction for the work of learning and leave the question of education's paradoxes behind.