Ordinary extraordinary: the para/pata:institutionalism of Critical Practice

ABSTRACT This paper considers Critical Practice, the London-based cluster of artists, designers, curators, academics and other researchers who share a commitment to the critical practice of art, its organisation and its education as public goods. I discuss Critical Practice as an open learning culture, contextualising it with reference to institutional critique and the discursive practice of peer-to-peer exchange as general social technique. This leads me to consider ways this exchange can confound elitism and conservatism when conscientiously organised through sensitive formats. I consider two that feature in the repertoire of Critical Practice: un-conferences and future archiving. These formats and the Cluster's relation to its host (Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London) are respectively probed using parainstituting (i.e. self-organisation as social reproduction) and patainstituting (i.e. the self-organisation of aspiration). After discussing each in turn, I propose a nascent framework of pata/para:instituting. I have written this account of Critical Practice as a long-standing member. My interest in better understanding the Cluster's ways of doing and being is not an end in itself, but rather to more effectively grasp the qualities of self-organised practice and/as education in art and design more generally.