Kamsahamnida Korea!

Just another night in Seoul...

On a cramped thoroughfare where vendors are selling everything from street meat to silk scarves out of little improvised stalls, I hear the ping of aluminum bats swatting baseballs coming from an urban batting range.  Around the corner there’s the faint sound of a low bellowing hum—I follow it through an unexpected collection of art galleries and Italian restaurants to shortly arrive at a temple where dozens of people are praying before a three-story tall gold statue of Buddha.  A couple of blocks away Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” is being performed al fresco for a few hundred people sitting on the grass in the middle of a busy city square… and all of this just on my way to find the subway.

Last week arts educators from around the globe made their way to Seoul in South Korea for UNESCO’s Second World Conference on Arts Education.  This four day event brought together hundreds of artists, teaching artists, arts researchers, and arts administrators hailing from six different continents.  I can’t be more appreciative to UNESCO and the Korean Government for inviting me across the international dateline to participate in this event.

I was lucky enough to be presenting as part of a four person panel that included Professor Kevin Tavin from Ohio State University in the US, Professor Meki Nzewi from the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and visual artist Kira Kim from South Korea.  The session was moderated by none other than Dr. Judy Burton who, coincidentally, was my advisor during the one year I spent in the Arts and Arts Education program at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

The title of our session was “Towards a New Concept of Arts Education.”  Kevin kicked things off by discussing his research on visual culture, noting how images define the self and others and that “meanings and identities are both created and contested” through the application of contemporary imagery and the gazing of artwork back at the viewer.  Next Professor Nzewi led the group through a discussion that focused on the importance of traditional dance and music, and the necessity to maintain local customs in order to uphold a “spiritual voice.”  Nzewi suggested that we are “destroying the world with modernist stuff” and that “contemporary education is cheating our children.”  I was next up presenting a paper entitled “Envisioning the Future of the Arts and Arts Education: Challenging Core Assumptions, Addressing Adaptive Challenges, and Fostering the Next Generation of Arts Leaders” (you can access the full text of this paper by clicking here).  After me, Mr. Kim took to the podium and free-associated his way through a complex, sometimes emotional, verbal collage of ideas.  The room had 100 seats which were shortly filled, and before long the conference assistants were hauling in extra chairs and interpretation devices for the 20-30 people standing along the edges of the round room.   Dr. Burton invited questions from the audience after each speaker, and though no one had anything for Kevin and Meki, by the time they got to me folks started lining up behind the microphone.    Maybe the crowd was finally warmed up… or maybe it had something to do with me suggesting that relying on Baby Boomer arts leaders to redefine our field would actually impede progress in our domain rather than push it forward.  Whatever the reason, the discussion was lively, though many of the questions from the audience were in hard to follow monologue form.  Dr. Burton capped my end of the event off by asking perhaps the most important question of the day: “Edward, even though I’m a Baby Boomer,” she said,  ”will you still dance with me?”

Answer: Any time Judy!

I was really pleased with the presentation and following discussion (despite having trouble getting the remote control doo-dad to advance my slides properly) and very excited to have met so many interesting people: Ratnaganadi from Indonesia, Dr. Meen Sheng from Singapore, Ji-Sun, Soojin, Lim, Jeong, and Jiyoung from Korea, and of course, Erin from Wisconsin.  I was especially excited to meet Professor Sedky and her student Dina from the College of Art Education in Cairo—both of them are doing tres cool stuff!  I’m also incredibly in debt to a Mexican actress/teaching artist named Althair who, although she ultimately wound up spilling a glass of wine on me, had an uncanny knack for engaging me in conversation precisely when I needed somebody to talk to the most.

It was great to see that the generational distribution of the room for the panel session I participated in was incredibly diverse.  In fact, I don’t think I had been in another session during the entire conference that had so many younger people filling up the seats.  Overall though, throughout the conference I was surprised—dare I say disappointed—to hear such an unexpected emphasis on maintaining tradition, supporting localism, and clinging to the past coming from presenters representing countries that ranged from France to South Africa to Japan.  I’m not suggesting that we need to kill traditional culture off and develop a universal digital aesthetic, but denying the spread of contemporary technologies in the arts seems to me an act of resistance that will do more harm than good for 21st Century arts learners—no matter what continent, country, or community they come from. It’s the old dichotomies thing, and I can’t help but quote Eric Booth quoting David Bohm in saying “anytime you see seeming polarities, look for the greater truth that contains them both.”  I guess I was hoping to hear more language geared towards “fold-it-in” rather than “push-it-out.”

Ehh… but what do I know.  I’m just some silly American dude trying make things happen…