Disrupting Spaces with Truisms Part 4

 Disrupting Spaces with Truisms

Part 4

Ironically, the advertisements would stay up longer than the Truisms. Once something gets labeled as a threat, it doesn't last long. Students put the Truisms around the school on Tuesday, and by Thursday, all but one had been taken down. At last glance, one of them is still hanging, but the other nine were removed by the administration. I had partly anticipated this, but I wanted to see what student reactions would be. One student even emailed me to let me know that they had noticed they were all taken down. Another had someone vandalize their Truism before it was taken down. Their poster had been tagged with "bozo" and "emo" before the administration ultimately removed it from the hallways.

Instead of swooping in and working with the admin (I had let the principal know but I hadn't communicated with administrators directly), I let students come up with a solution. They decided that putting the Truisms in teacher's classrooms would add a layer to the project that would keep the posters safe, but also add a degree of credibility to the scavenger hunt. Teachers could be asked to tell students about the scavenger hunt and continue creating a sense of ambiguity and mystery. 

Students updated the directions too, framing the replacement of the signs in teachers' classrooms as an attempt to thwart those who were seeking to silence the truth.

The urge to step in and work to reframe the project has happened for me several times. The language, as seen in the above slide, is quite combative. While I understand and appreciate their feeling of the project being attacked in an attempt to silence their Truisms and the scavenger hunt. However, this coupled with what I discussed in the previous post regarding the way schools' are not neutral spaces and carry their own messages and codes. I would argue that schools (and spaces) not only carry messages (texts) but also mediate them. Like filters on images, everything in the school space is filtered through or mediated through the dominate messages coming from the space itself. This is, after all, what using art to disrupt spaces is all about. It is about these dominate messages that are also so invisible.

I wonder if part of the most important work with disrupting spaces is actually involved in making the invisible visible. Just was as dominant narratives are often invisible until they are named, and understood (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008). Only then can these narratives be torn down. Shor and Freire (1987) described how knowledge can only be reconstructed after it has been understood as a community and then deconstructed for reconstruction. In educating to liberate, this can only be done through this community dialogue. Ultimately, because of Google Voice and the collection of Truisms, our Writer's Workshop is working to liberate not only students but spaces from dominant narratives. Jenny Holzer created the idea of Truisms to challenge people to think critically about the narratives that construct our very reality. Reading leads to questioning, questioning leads to examination, and examination leads to action. In this case, that action looks like more voices and more Truisms. As students work to find the truth, they are ultimately working to define their own.

The next part of this series will explore the ideas we discussed on 5.5.22 with Dr. Goss. I gave the students a prompt about the project and their perceptions. I'll be able to examine their thinking, and the conversation we  had after they finished writing. I remain so blessed to work with such incredible students, an amazing school, and Dr. Goss. Very, very grateful. 

This is part 3 in a series of posts about a current project in our Writer's Workshop class at Central Gwinnett High School. We are working with Dr. Goss, from Kennesaw State University. Dr. Goss is an art-focused professor of Language Arts who is on my dissertation committee. This project is inspired by his suggestions and current work with university students but is also largely inspired by work he has previously done with his own high school students in Buffalo, New York. In this project, we have explored the art of Jenny Holzer, an artist who uses words to form "Truisms" that are put into public spaces in large and disruptive ways. These Truisms are largely up to the interpretation of the reader, pulling on semiotics, and reader response theory. Truisms stand as art, with meaning coming from the individual. These short, powerful truths originated from young adult literature (YAL), and the reading choices of the students in the class. You can read the two previous parts of this project here:

Beyond Independent Reading: Disrupting Spaces with Truisms Part 1

Disrupting Spaces with Truisms Part 2

Disrupting Spaces with Truisms Part 3

References

Duncan-Andrade, J. M. R., & Morrell, E. (2008). The art of critical pedagogy: Possibilities for moving from theory to practice in urban schools. Peter Lang. Table of contents only http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip087/2007051208.html 

Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). What is the "dialogical method" of teaching? [research-article]. The Journal of Education, 169(3), 11-31.