The Silent University: Towards a Transversal Pedagogy

Annotation

This is the first book on the practice of the Silent University, which is a fictive pedagogical platform initiated by artist Ahemt Ogut in 2013. The book consists of several chapters by invited authors, reports by the Silent University branch of their continuation as well as failures. The book aims to bring discussion of how pedagogy as an artistic methodology could provide debates on public space, commons, co-existence and racism under the global migration crisis. Furthermore, the book discusses methods of socially engaged art and its role in creating modalities of co-existence in society. The authors also attempt to write a manifesto of transversal pedagogy as an artistic provocation beyond borders and institutions.

Pelin Tan

...the term collaboration can become an ambiguous one due to conflict in the relationship with a hosting institution. Whenever an SU platform (such as a conference, meeting, research room, open course session) needs to be set up within a host institution, the whole negotiation process not only questions the role of SU but that of the host institution itself in terms of the guest/host relation- ship, the institution’s identity, the ethics of diverse audience participation, legal contracts, and institutional policy. In this process, the host institution needs to re-examine its own institutional nature and to decide whether it wants to be a part of the social affect as a transforming instituting practice or to continue to remain a neoliberal bureaucratic instrument of culture.