THE STUDY OF MAERIAL CULTURE FOR ART LEARNING AND MAKING: AN ONGOING JOURNEY WITH A/R/TOGRAPHY

Abstract

Art making has its uniqueness that not only involves visual language expressions and interpretations but also offers both art creators and the audience aesthetic, multi-sensory and embodied experience. It is affective and can contribute to cognitive development in the way of being affective (Addison, 2011). In art lessons, students can learn by doing which means there is no absolute order between learning and doing or isolation between affective experience and cognitive knowledge. Moreover, “by focusing on affect, an energy rather than a representation, the artist (or the student) engages with both the most extreme, and, more particularly, the minutest fluctuations in the intensities of their experience” (Addison, 2011, p.369). For the development of students, a/r/tography can be a great methodology to explore these “extreme and minute fluctuations” in art learning, and consequently to help students get into a zone to explore the unknown and potentiality art making in relation to their living experiences. This paper will mainly discuss how a/r/tography can be a methodology to be applied in art learning and making for primary school art lessons by theoretical investigations of case studies. Moreover, as a/r/tography has power to help students 1) create their own artworks and visual language to express their learning experiences, 2) establishing living inquiries to experience their lives deeply and effectively, and 3) encouraging both self-learning and peer-learning modes, this paper will also convey opening assumptions for curriculum design in art education.