Presented throughout the historic Teachers College building on 120th St. in NY Doing and Undergoing will be a site-specific installation presented on four floors of the fully operational College. The Exhibit will reference the thoughts and wisdom of American Philosopher John Dewey the Grandfather of the school and whose foundational text “Art As Experience” is still relevant today.
The exhibition will organize around the three Dewyian themes of “Experiential Inquiry” the notion that processes of inquiry, looking and finding meaning are transformative, “Experiment and Experience” where the crazy shit sticks and “Doing and Undergoing”, Where doing alone isn’t sufficient, it is by undergoing that experiences are transformational.
Connections between learning experience and art will be actuated with the spectators becoming active participants since they will be guided through the works located throughout the hallways, staircases, and library of the original structure. The “tour” will reverberate the complex history of a college that once started out by bringing pubic education, health and mental care to the underserved such as immigrants, women, and children. Drawing from this, the exhibition is also intended at least in part is to break down the conventional distinctions between different communities of experiencers. Since it directly pulls into its orbit the often-separate spheres of teachers, students, facilities workers and art community at large.
The artworks selected for the exhibition will reflect one or more of the three theme of “Experiential Inquiry” “Experiment and Experience” and “Doing and Undergoing and most importantly will sensitively engage the site as educational structure and idea.
