Kiss My Edit: Experimental art writing pedagogy – The Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools

In this paper, I examine the condition of “art writing” as research-led academic learning practice. How are the universities responding to changes in creative writing and what might experimental art writing be? This paper investigates collaborative teaching effects on art writing outcomes. Writing is primarily a critical experience, so should we develop a punk (subversion, disruption, performative exercises) approach to lecturing, in order to challenge habitual thought? A Case Study comprises the UNSW Art & Design art-writing course in 2012-13. Its final goal was to create an online journal Artwrite, showcasing the students’ art writing and completed within a tight time schedule. The space between collaborating co-lecturers is one of fractious and performative interaction. The good cop/bad cop routine is a natural method of creating tension in the lecture room, which is a useful tool for developing ‘spirit’ in student art writing. Individual skills become magnified and stereotypes are difficult to avoid, when lecturers work together. How might this create experimentation in student work, which builds upon consolidation of conventional literary skills?

About the author

Prue Gibson is a Teaching Fellow in creative writing at School of Arts and Media, UNSW. She is an art writer, published in Art Monthly, Artlink, Art Collector, Media/Culture Journal and author of the art book, The Rapture of Death, (Boccalatte 2010). She has had seven short fiction stories published. As a PhD candidate at School of Arts and Media, UNSW, her dissertation is on Art, Object Oriented Ontology and speculative writing and she recently curated an exhibition at Alaska Projects called The Carpentry of Speculative Things. She is also a sessional lecturer at UNSW Art & Design, teaching “art writing” in the Master of Curating and Creative Leadership. She recently received a 2014/2015 Australia Council grant to write a book, Plant sentience and bio-art.