LIAM GILLICK–ASSIGNMENTS ARE HOMEWORK

Assignments are homework. They remove the responsibility from the cultural producer to devise their own context, and create an artificial power relationship to replace the real power relationship between student‐artist and older ex‐student‐teacher‐artist. The assignment replaces the potential for real work and real recognition of power dynamics. The assignment allows the student to avoid taking responsibility for his or her own critical awareness and replaces that with a set of directed “potentials” that are actually rehearsals for future instructions from various powers, i.e. galleries, institutions, and various “clients,” all of which are in direct conflict with the potential of art. Therefore I do not give assignments, I don’t acknowledge work done as an assignment, and I don’t find them funny. 

POSTED NOVEMBER 20, 2013 TO NON ASSIGNMENT

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MICHELLE GRABNER–NO ASSIGNMENT: THE MEDIUM OF INDIRECT TEACHING

Only dead fish follow the stream.

—Finnish expression

The most effective and trustworthy “assignment” I have honed over my twenty years of teaching studio arts is simply: NO ASSIGNMENT as a form of indirect teaching.

A “no assignment” method does not guarantee a Socratic debate, yet it does cultivate critical thinking while eschewing the authority of the teacher and rebuffing the pedagogical misadventure of assessment outcomes.

Critically, indirect teaching emphasizes the weight of work, supporting self-directed knowledge that is shaped by the limits and freedoms of the student and the institution. Work and assessment are the responsibility of the student.