Notes on Corpoliteracy: Bodies in Post-digital Educational Contexts

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates the potential to challenge power relations, and reconsider teaching practices and conceptions of learning bodies. How do bodies in a digital learning setting perform are read and observed? How they can be included in learning settings? Since teaching and learning increasingly take part in digital learning environments, especially since the outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic, digital art teaching needs rethinking toward the knowledge of learning bodies and of the perception of learning in the digital realm: a digital corpoliteracy.

Introduction

In this chapter, I critically reflect on the question of how bodies in a post-digital state of mind (Archey, 2013) perform, learn, are read and observed, as well as how they can be included in learning settings. Specifically, I focus on the knowing body in the context of the digital worlds, as well as the situation of distance learning since the outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic. The article was written while these phenomena were still evolving. Therefore, this essay is a collection of observations of “the now,” focusing on what I call critical digital corpoliteracy, and framed from my perspective as a researching art educator. Aspects of art, education, and teaching at art schools and universities, as well as my experiences during the last six months form the knowledge basis of my essay.¹

We learn not only with our minds but also with our bodies. This is a standing consideration in the context of educational theories as well as in art education. Until today, the relation of the learning body is repeatedly used as an argument in educational contexts. In the history of education, we can find it in the often quoted, and by no means unproblematic, statement by Pestalozzi of unity of “head, heart and hand” as well as the development and training of the senses as Rousseau argued in his Émile in 1762. The idea of the learning body later on appears in reform pedagogy and is often related with the idea of the independent development and self-activity of the child. One example in the history of art education is James Liberty Tadd’s “New Methods in Education” (Tadd, 1899/1903) in which he lets children draw a circle. The size of the circle depends from the child’s arm, and not from a preset instruction.² Over the past few decades, critical pedagogies have directed the attention to the various ways how hidden curricula inscribe power in the learning body (Postman & Weingartner, 1969). For example, bell hooks (1994) describes teaching spaces as places in which persons, as a whole, with their experiences and stories should find space. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (2018) speaks of “corpoliteracy” (p. 109) and “corpoepistemology” (p. 114) in connection with knowledge inscribed in and performed by bodies within dance performances.

Corpoliteracy and Corpoepistemology

Ndikung (2018) describes “the possibility of a corpoliteracy – an effort to contextualize the body as a platform, stage, site and medium of learning, as a structure and organ that acquires, stores and disseminates knowledge” (p. 90). His argument stems from the realm of dance and rhythm and he understands them as “sociopolitical method[s] and practice[s]” (p. 114) in which realities and knowledges are communicated within a group. Therefore, he uses the concept of corpoepistemology to describe “the study of the nature and extent of bodily knowledge in dance performance, as well as how the today and dance performance produce, enact, inscribe and propagate knowledges” (p. 114). I put these concepts into a productive relationship with art education by using three examples in which learning with and through the body, as well as various inscriptions, of knowledge become visible.

How Can Bodies Be Read in the Context of Education?

What is actually learned at school? This seemingly simple question can be answered very differently depending on who is asked and why. For example, no teacher would claim that her teaching contributes to the ability of students to write text messages on their smartphone under the unnoticed by her. This is only one of many examples of actions that take place because of how schools are structured and thought of (e.g., frontal teaching). Besides what is taught unintentionally, other vital things are not taught at all, as it is stated in the poem, What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade by Brad Aaron Modlin (2016).³ This poem tells about learnings, which are not taught in school—but should be taught, such as “falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something else” (Modlin, 2016, par. 4). It speaks of tasks a general curriculum usually does not cover. When it comes to knowledge that affects everybody, school seems to fail.

Body Knowledge vs. Body Ability

Lea Fröhlicher, for her artistic mediation project Kniffe wissen (2012), asked people of different ages in Switzerland to show their everyday tricks (or hacks).⁴ Another term for Kniffe would be lifehacks, which make everyday things easier and therefore sometimes involve the use of objects in ways that completely differ from their original intention (e.g., paperclips as safety pins). Lifehacks from the world of DIY and DIY tutorials can be found on digital platforms like YouTube. Fröhlicher (2012) understands Kniffe as “a specific knowledge (skill) that facilitates the performance of a certain activity” (par. 1, translation G.K.). Some examples are “tying hair together without a hair tie” (par. 11 translation G.K.), or “opening a can of energy drink without foaming over” (par. 12, translation G.K.). However, these tricks do constitute knowledge that is certainly relevant for some—if one has long hair or an affinity for energy drinks, for example. Most likely, such abilities are not considered as knowledge worth teaching in most school curricula, nor are they generally found in teaching books. Sometimes, they are learnt by watching others doing it, as in video tutorials (Fig. 10.1).

Fig. 10.1

Lea Fröhlicher: Kniffe Wissen, Haare zusammenbinden ohne Haargummi (Tie hair together without hair tie), artistic mediation project, Videostill, 2012. Courtesy of the artist

An exhibition at the Hartware Medienkunstverein titled, Now I’m helping myself—The 100 best video tutorials from the net (2014), provides an impressive collection of such lifehacks. The first video, a Finnish instructional video from 1979, shows something that can be of essential importance in successful educational biographies; something that has probably never been the subject of a school lesson: how to open a door. While watching the video, questions might arise regarding one’s own self-evident actions (for example, how many doors have you opened and closed today? With which foot have you entered the room you are in at the moment?) and knowledge (for example, since when have you known that pressing a handle opens a door? How can you know in which direction it will open?). In the context of art education, one could ask, why are we sitting so often on chairs at a table when learning? What does your body do when seeing art in an exhibition space? (cf. Hummel & Krauss, 2007)

These questions direct our attention to situated body knowledge, which we (presumably) had not been questioning significantly until now. Hence, tutorial videos can make explicit our own situated knowledge, which is often applied without reflection, and is at our disposal through our socialization in certain context.

Of course, one simply can’t be aware of one’s bodies this way all the time—or otherwise one might not be able to even open a door. However, this allows to (a) critically question (privileged) knowledge, and (b) recognize individual abilities of what one already can do. In the context of education, this means two things: Firstly, to understand what is still to be unlearned and, secondly, to learn what is already there but not recognized. This would be the first aspect of corpoliteracy; that is, to become aware of it, as well as performing as a body and perceiving other bodies. A second aspect is to experience our own bodies as a learning and knowing element in our lives. Learners have their own corpoepistemology to refer to and sometimes schools do not encourage those, and sometimes they simply ignore them.

How to Read Learning Bodies?

Thus far, my focus has been on what is learned, could be learned, or is ignored in educational situations. However, from the perspective of corpoliteracy, it is also important to ask: What do bodies actually do when learning? In the following, I shift the discussion to the perception of the learning body in educational contexts.

In 2014, a widely distributed photograph taken by art historian and journalist Gijsbert van der Wal stirred up both the professional discourse and the public debate on students’ media activities. The photo shows a group of students sitting in front of the famous painting Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn, seemingly looking into their smartphones. After the journalist had posted the photo on his Twitter account with the following text: “This afternoon at the Rijksmuseum” (van der Wal 2014), a lively discussion and distribution of the photo developed, that van der Wal summarized on his Flickr account:

It went viral, with people often adding rather dispirited captions: today’s youth is more interested in Whatsapp than they are in Rembrandt. On the other hand, there were people who warned not to be misled by the image: they asserted that the students were in fact attentive to the art works, using the museum’s freely downloadable multimedia tour. (van der Wal, November 27, 2014)

As van der Wal continues, the photograph was shared 9,500 times on the social media platform Facebook alone. It evoked a wide range of reactions among the users of diverse social media platforms. From the comments, it becomes clear that this scene is provocative and leads to speculations. While watching this photo, I speculate: Were the young people curling their necks instead of watching the painting? Were they researching information on the painting online? Did they engage with it while turning their backs on the original? Did they use the museum’s free Wi-Fi to play around with other content?

From a normative art educator’s perspective, one would expect the children to be turned toward the work of art, maybe while listening to the explanations of an art mediator, and possibly taking notes with a pencil on paper. Exactly these types of expectations not only raise questions about what practices are desired or undesired in the educational institution museum (trafo.k, 2014), they even more importantly raise questions about (1) how do we think children and young people should deal with art, (2) what they should look like when they do it, and (3) how were they already doing it before they went into a museum. Obviously, it is basically possible, even when looking apparently attentive, to not look closely or pay attention, to play a game, or to communicate with others. Of course, this is possible with or without a smartphone. However, it looks different, because we are not yet used to read a body that is curled over a smartphone as a learning body.

This is why it is not only a matter of involving the concept of a critical digital corpoliteracy in learning, but also in pedagogy because learning can look different than we might first imagine it. Is it sitting on a chair in front of a table, looking attentive and taking notes with a pencil or is it checking some facts in a smartphone or even sitting under a table instead of in front of it? How might our answers change our learning? Becoming aware of reading bodies, which pass or do not pass as learners, might often not be reflected by educators.

To Practice Something for the Future: Strategies of Pre-enactment⁵

My third example looks at a body reacting to an interjection and subsequently recontextualizing a situation. “OK boomer” were words uttered by Chlöe Swarbrick, accompanied by a frugal gesture during her speech on climate change in the New Zealand parliament in November 2019. Swarbrick, a member of the Green Party, used this verbal and bodily remark to comment on an interjection made by another member of the Parliament, resulting only in a minimal interruption to her own speech or even her concentration (Fig. 10.2).

Fig. 10.2

Martina Bramkamp: Drawings from Chlöe Swarbrick’s speech on 6.11.2019 after Bloomberg, 2019. Drawing: 2020

When watching a video of the incident, it seems as if Swarbrick’s reaction and gesture were some kind of a routine. This gesture was shared in the social media mostly by younger people and later on covered by several media outlets. In an article published in The Guardian, Swarbrick explains her gesture:

“My ‘OK boomer’ comment in parliament was off-the-cuff, albeit symbolic of the collective exhaustion of multiple generations set to inherit ever-amplifying problems in an ever-diminishing window of time” (Swarbrick, 2019, para. 15).

The strategy of (re)contextualizing an interjection with a gesture and two words in the shortest possible time is not only a political move, but a gesture that derives from a hedonistic youth culture, particularly from the platform Tik Tok, where thousands of videos with the hashtag #OKBoomer⁶ were produced well before the above-described situation.

Launched in 2018, Tik Tok allows users to create and share short videos, often accompanied with music. Popular content and tools include lip-syncing, dance moves, and stop tricks made to short music samples. In addition, users can react to videos of other users and quote them in a split-screen (“duet”). The term “OK boomer” was used by teenagers, such as @linrizz (18.07.2019), within a response to a video by @old_school_is_not_so_bad, who describes himself as part of the baby boomer generation. While he talks about “Generation Z” as “dreamers” who have “Peter Pan syndrome,” @linrizz, in a split-screen, draws “OK boomer” on her college block and holds it while smiling gently as a comment on @old_school_is_not_so_bad’s outbreak that matches several clichés of a male white baby boomer. Other users dance to a remix of the song “OK Boomer” (Kuli 2019) while describing or mimicking their conflicts with members of the generation baby boomer.

In November 2019, the hashtag #OKBoomer received further attention as it was used in a music video by Youtuber and influencer Julien Bam on his YouTube channel (Bam 17.11.2019), which is subscribed to by more than five million users. In the lyrics, Bam relates to the intergenerational discussions around climate change:

He says::

Fridays for Future is only for skipping school

I say::

You say we have to fight for our future

He says::

You young children let the internet deceive you

Me like::

OK BOOMER (Bam 2019, translation G.K.)

Bam’s song clearly shows that the seemingly apolitical attitude within a mainstream YouTube channel is by no means as apolitical.

Going back to Chlöe Swarbrick, she explicitly refers to Tik Tok and the hashtag #OKBoomer (2019), thus demonstrating her knowledge about digital youth culture, if not even her own participation in it. Youth cultural gestures and expressions can thus have a direct political impact by moving from one context (Tik Tok) to another (Parliament). Oliver Marchart describes such anticipatory aspects of gestures as pre-enactment:

Therefore, I propose to use pre-enactment as a term for the artistic anticipation of a political event to come. But this political event cannot simply be extrapolated from well-known contemporary tendencies (in most cases, not much fantasy is required to develop dystopian views of our future). Rather, the future event at stake is an intrinsically conflictual event: the future outbreak of a conflict. (Marchart, 2019, p. 177)

Furthermore, Marchart describes pre-enactment as a way of practicing political activism, even if it is not yet necessary, in order to be able to use it when it, indeed, becomes necessary; for example, in a situation where interruption is used as a powerful gesture by interrupting a young MP. In this sense, I would like to encourage teachers as well as students to exchange, organize, and teach each other things for situations that do not yet exist, to formulate, develop, exercise, and strengthen their own attitudes and gestures until needed. OK Institution. This would be my third reading of corpoliteracy, or more correctly, critical future corpoliteracy.

Addendum: #TalkingHeads: An Update on the Learning Body

While I was starting to write this chapter in March 2020, the COVID-19 global pandemic changed the world, and with it, physical situations of learning. Coming together in a public, physical space was previously the norm for most schools and universities, online teaching being a mere exception. In order not to endanger one’s health and others, the very idea of coming together has changed (or has had to change). Online teaching had become the new norm⁷ in some countries since the first lockdown in March 2020, at least for the time being. Distance learning in universities and schools tool place not only in the private rooms of students and teachers, but also in video chats running on for-profit platforms.

In this context, the visibility and positioning of the bodies changes in significant ways, For example: (1) While in the classrooms at least half of the bodies of the students (upper body, hands, and head) could be seen and, depending on the narrowness of the room, also be smelled and even felt, only heads and facial expressions are predominantly perceivable in online spaces—occasionally accompanied by hands. (2) Previously, the bodies of the teaching staff, including gestures, walking, or sitting were located in the same room as the participants. Although the positioning of the bodies might have been restricted by the room furniture, participants could choose physical proximity or distance when taking a seat. (3) Those who were presenting something to the class could choose to move closer to the projection or closer to the group, to position themselves in the same direction with the group or the opposite. Everyone could choose a seat, lean back or forward, use an opened laptop or book as a privacy screen. In an online video conference, the choice of seat is not individual, the video conferencing software arranges the participants according to the time of their “arrival,” and/or the number and length of their audible contributions. Lastly, (4) since the participants are often asked to switch off their microphone, the shared space can no longer be heard and perceived by any other sense but the eye, which merely sees moving images (people) in tiles on a screen. All this has consequences for the learning bodies, the shared teaching and learning as bodies, and with bodies.

In order to think through these consequences, I discuss below five examples of how bodies can be read and understood differently in the digital world. This list of examples will most likely change further in the coming weeks, months, and years.⁸ As in almost all cases, an analog situation cannot be transferred directly to the digital world, simply because the digital does not completely correspond to the logics of the analog. Therefore, the point here is not to play off one against the other, but to show starting points from which digital corpoliteracy can be developed.

#talkingheads

By focusing the camera on the face, other gestures of the body become invisible. The video conferencing programs give the participants the opportunity to observe themselves while speaking and, if necessary, to correct their own facial expressions (as well as their hairstyle). Possibilities of physical expression (leaning back, breathing loudly, letting the gaze wander, and so on) are reduced. Looking into each other’s eyes is hardly possible, because this would mean looking into the camera. However, this view becomes particularly handy when the participants draw each other because neither one’s own look on the face of the other person can be perceived, nor that of the other person. Also, the image of the counterpart is already reduced to a 2D version. Try it for yourself.

#platforms⁹

On April 8, 2020, between 8 am and 6 pm, I used Zoom, Jitsi, Ilias, Dropbox, Skype, Whatsapp, Telegram, Mail, Word, InDesign, Messages, Facetime, Discord, WeTransfer, Isyflow, Moodle, Teams, Slack, Google Docs, Blog, Instagram, Balloon.io, Facebook, Messenger, Mentimeter, and Twitter to teach and learn. On some days during the lockdown, I hear myself wondering, “Where do we meet?” This is despite the fact that it is not a physical place but media platforms that this question refers to. Meanwhile, my body has only moved between the workplace, the kitchen, and the toilet. While in an analog setting, students and teachers can rearrange tables and chairs in the room and furnish themselves, there is still a lack of possibilities to adapt or reinvent functions of digital platforms. To speculate: What would a digital chair circle look like? How could a group of people walk together and casually exchange information in a digital space, as in second life¹⁰?

#heyhost

In online teaching, the teacher has several roles at the same time. He or she is not only an input provider and moderator, but also responsible for technology and accessibility. The group does not sit together in a room that will eventually become stuffy. The joint responsibility for opening the window, if necessary, is eliminated. The participants take care of their own digital access, namely, their Internet connection and its functionality. Roles are often unclear: What if the private network connection of each individual is not sufficient to be in contact with 20 other Jitsi users at the same time? Who could that student call for support? Indeed, online spaces are more dependent on individualized responsibilities, as the very practice of coming together has changed.

#privacy

Learning and teaching have become more private. For example: (1) The institutional spaces used for meeting have been privatized by external, private service providers.¹¹ (2) Tools that were previously used mainly privately (e.g., Skype or FaceTime) are now used as workspaces. (3) A view into one’s own private spaces as well as into those of others becomes possible. This makes it possible for other actors to participate in the seminar and possibly influence it, such as roommates, children, or even pets, such as the cat living in the apartment, which may take over the screen and thus attract collective attention and “awww” effects. If the camera is switched off, one can do private things while listening. It is not clear whether this helps to keep concentration or not. All we know for now is that they are different types of learning settings.

#simultaneity

In a talk on digital learning and teaching in the arts on May 11, 2020, and in a seminar meeting on art education at Berne University of the Arts on May 15, 2020, I led a survey with two questions: “What do I like about online teaching and what do I not like about online teaching?” A quick analysis of the answers given by students showed that the sensation of emptiness in the digital, as well as the lack of corporality in online teaching are not appreciated. The advantages of being independent of locations and circumstances as well as having different spaces at hand, are however appreciated. Since many events are now taking place online, it is possible to participate in public talks from all over the world. It has become easier to hold a meeting, more resource-efficient and more accessible, because the body itself does not have to be set in motion.¹² The barriers of accessibility have thus shifted, and even more, some physical conditions become invisible when the body gets reduced to digital talking heads. Nevertheless, students (and I) miss physical presence and coming together.

A Digital Corpoliteracy?

The examples sketched out above document moments when a direct transmission from the digital to the analog no longer seems to work. What was previously fluidly intertwined in teaching, begins to stumble when online. In concrete terms, these examples are intended to call for a rethinking of previous educational practices. In my opinion, this is one of the great potentials of the so-called distance learning: questions, ideas, and strategies evolve from these moments. I think it is important to question and reflect such moments of failure, unavailability, even frustration, in an appreciative and critical way. Instead of quickly restoring a new “normality” online, in which teachers talk and students listen, let’s pursue this question (again): What ways are there to teach critically? This question might be understood with Foucault (2007) as “the art of not to be governed or better, the art of not being governed like that and at that cost” (p. 45).

I am writing this for my teaching self as well. As I write this last paragraph in Autumn 2020, my online teaching reached a certain point of normality, where the “old,” physical methods of questioning hierarchy do not work the same way in the digital—and the new ones need to be developed or yet to be improved. In the context of educational theories, the concept of the learning body becomes confronted in an almost reflexive way with online learning and teaching, especially, when it comes to art and education. However, the world is changing and with it the digital and globally circulating images, and the way we deal with them modify the initial situations of learning and teaching (Kolb & Schütze, 2020; Meyer & Kolb, 2015). Occasionally hierarchies are changed during these shifts, like when learners are more familiar with digital devices, online platforms, and software than their teachers are. But education is not only defined by shared time, space, and knowledge, but also the knowledge of the bodies and of their perception. What bodies can do within this setting and how they are read in the process should become part of the curriculum of critical institutions striving towards a critical digital corpoliteracy, especially if they wish perceive themselves as post-digital.

Notes

• 1. The reflection on the concept of “Corpoliteracy” started with a contribution to the symposium “Körper lesen! Corpoliteracy in Art, Education and Everyday Life” in September 2019 at HKW Berlin. Online: https://hkw.de/de/app/mediathek/video/78520 [3.11.2020]

• 2. An image for this exercise can be retrieved here: https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/tadd1903/0051 [3.11.2020]

• 3. The curator, illustrator and art educator Dahlia El Broul made me aware of this poem.

• 4. Translations for the German word “Kniff” are “trick,” “nip, flip, flick.” Since those everyday tricks sometimes involve the use of things that are not meant to be used that was, I would add “hack” as well. As Juuso Tervo points out, the Finnish word for such tricks is “niksi” which comes close to “Kniffe”.

• 5. Thanks to Nora Sternfeld for the reference to pre-enactment (Marchart, 2019).

• 6. “OK Boomer” becomes problematic when the term is used to discriminate. Chlöe Swarbrick used it in the direct context of a question of generational justice in the context of the debate on climate change, when her speech was interrupted.

• 7. Although digital learning scenarios have been worked on before—but always knowing that the analog situation is the normal case. This has changed since the global pandemic Covid-19 and the subsequent restrictions on the analog encounter of many people from different households.

• 8. In spring term 2020, I had a lively exchange of experiences with colleagues about online teaching with: Jacqueline Baum, Maren Polte, Andrea Rickhaus, Italo Fiorentino, Katja Zeidler, Konstanze Schütze, Duygu Örs, Wolfgang Jung, Ibrahim Quarishi, Renate Höllwart, Beate Florenz, Haimo Ganz.

• 9. More about the power of platforms see: Michael Seemann: Platforms as Political Economies. https://mspr0.de/?p=5186 [3.11.2020]

• 10. I thank Kevin Tavin for the reference to Second Life.

• 11. To this problem, especially to the freedom of design, see Heusinger (2019).

• 12. For example, see the guided tours with a robot in the Van Abbe Museum Eindhoven, which have been available for some years now and have been practicing exactly this resource change for several years.