Ecotone-Film-Venice 2019

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz7xgRNhEoM

Ecotone- 

Laurence explores the use of unconventional performative processes to challenge the notion of engagement and reveal what may be the 'true' value of the arts in the global context. Ecotone (Astreida Neimenis, 2012) defines an area of transition between two ecosystems, which also creates connections where rising tensions generate new forms of lives.

The work investigates the 'sites of resistance' between the value of art /the value of this international platform within global concerns such as climate change, migration and the more recent Covid concerns.

An Ecology of Learning

Against the grain, with the flow

Since Venice, Laurence has pursued her PhD research study considering live art as a radical pedagogical tool in secondary education. Inspired by her exploration of resistance, water and displacement in Venice

She created a new performance;

Against the grain, with the flow, questioning the potential for a 'Pedagogy of Resistance' within a post-humanist ethical framework, to transform the educational research paradigm ( Beuys, 1970, Biesta, 2018, Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, Barad, 2003, Hickey-Moody & Page, 2015)

Process/Product=Learning Capital?

Would a prioritisation of process over product in education produce  a better/deeper and more meaningful  learning capital? The artist wishes to challenge a possible displacement of the motivational trigger from exam targets  towards enjoying learning as an end in itself- a position which may not only lower the anxiety of the students but, moreover, would ‘re-humanise’ education (Giroux, 2011, Biesta, 2010). In her performance Laurence enacts the struggle for an artist to stand[in education], with a foot stuck in a fishbowl, symbol of a system which only looks onto itself. She makes a mark on the etching plate of education as she rubs against the grain (sand paper is attached to the bottom of the shoe). The prints created from the etching plate (a merely noticeable trace), remain unframed and stacked under a stuffed rabbit (a tribute to Beuys and to the artist's childhood pet), a symbol of the unrecognised value of playfulness as a meaningful outcome with mnemonic impact.