Since I got stuck on an Eisner/Kubrick kick in my last post, I'll borrow my bumper sticker from Freedman:
"The new conditions of visual culture illustrate that personal freedoms no longer only involve matters of free speech. They concern freedom of information in a range of visual art forms integral to the creation of individual and group knowledge. People cannot only speak freely; they can visually access, display and duplicate, computer manipulate, and globally televise."
Power to the people!
(That said, I must admit I feely both sympathetic and weary as I read Freedman. I've written elsewhere on this blog about how "As a student of literature, I wound up getting pretty frustrated with the poststructuralist critical discourse: all that reading between the lines leads one to suspect equivocation everywhere." That was about an article by Duncum, but their perspectives seem pretty closely aligned.)
Yeah! So glad I'm not the only one that finds Freedman an exhausing read! I have to take her in small doses and let them simmer before going on. Her writing is dense....and makes me feel equally so when I can't zoom through the text. Still, her thinking is profound. Visual arts and visual culture ARE increasingly infused into all aspects of our daily lives, and are therefore becoming more and more influential in our politics, social and cultural identities, and clearly, education. Therefore, the 8 general concepts she puts forth to guide 21st century art ed are crucial in keeping our content relevant and meaningful for students; to prevent what Gardner referred to as preparing students for the future with educational approaches from the past (bad paraphrase,sorry!)
ReplyDeleteI think you chose a most apropos quote for your bumper sticker because we are on some level dealing with freedom on information and access to vital literacy information. "They concern freedom of information in a range of visual art forms integral to the creation of individual and group knowledge. People cannot only speak freely; they can visually access, display and duplicate, computer manipulate, and globally televise."However, I agree with your analysis of Freedman's underlying message which I too think is post-structuralist. She has an agenda and although she is a brilliant thinker and a the vanguard of visual culture education she most certainly was influenced by Duncum. Keep in mind that this was written in 2003.
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