Pandemic experimentalism: decentering studio art education in an ongoing global emergency

After eighteen months of online art education during the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors consider Form and Time, a required first-year studio art course at OCAD University in Toronto, as a case study within global practices of reconfiguration and experimentalism in art and design pedagogy during the crisis. Form and Time was scheduled to launch as a required first-year course on campus at OCADU in Fall 2020, but quarantine prompted the pivot to fully remote. Critiques of the traditional art school’s situated format were launched before COVID-19 by anti-ableist, Indigenous and feminist scholars, addressing access barriers and stressing resilience in the face of crisis and oppression. The pandemic disrupted the centrality of in-person studios and critique methods in post-secondary art education; this accelerated and took unexpected turns during the online pedagogical experiments of the early pandemic. In this context, Form and Time foreshadows new modes of art school studio delivery, decentering and critically intersecting with studio precedents suddenly disrupted by remote learning during COVID-19. Form and Time’s weekly asynchronous video lectures and online meetings probed themes of Space, Form and Time. Students posted weekly studio experiments on discussion boards, using materials close at hand. As with other art and design courses, everyday objects and materials provided a platform for discussing material conditions and encounters during the pandemic. Students depicted their unique surroundings using strategies of observation and walking. They accessed faculty-made online micro-workshops recorded by the various course instructors on home studio material techniques. These comprise a growing online archive shared by faculty teaching the multi-section course. Looking forward, we anticipate further crises. Greater interplay between online, blended and hands-on art studio education will prioritize flexibility that can better adapt to life pressures and emergencies, opening access for a diverse range of learners in decentered locations.