Art-based-educational Research Praxes to critique and transform colonial, white and anthropocentrical supremacy in Vienna Hietzing
Abstract
The past and our knowledge of it shape our perspectives, how we perceive the world and how we act in it. Monuments, place names and representations in public space therefore influence our perspective on the present and the future.
Their narratives are constitutively linked to the formation of identity. The issue of memory and colonial representations of white supremacy in the form of monuments and place names are the subject of international debate today. The toppling of monuments and interventions at monuments in many places illustrate the urgency of addressing questions about monument and memory politics from a critical perspective. Examples of this are the debates surrounding the designation of M*Strasse or the renaming of Gröbenufer to May-Ayim-Ufer in Berlin as well as the toppling of the Edward Colston monument in Bristol, the monuments to Leopold II in Belgium or the statues of Cecil Rhodes in Cape Town and Oxford.
The project is dedicated to critically investigate on idealized colonial continuities based on specific monuments and representative sites in Vienna's Alt-Hietzing district. The research sees great potential in art-based-educational research practices to meet the challenges of critical memory work and to analyze, reflect on and overcome colonial and anthropocentric orders of knowledge and being. As a research project that deals with orders of knowledge and sees itself as an educational practice, the project searches for alternative concepts of (un)learning that work through colonial/modern dichotomies of mind/body and nature/culture. The practice is multi-epistemic and transdisciplinary and is located at the interface of theoretical reflection and artistic-research and educational practice. Post-humanist and decolonial approaches in relation to educational practice and the epistemological and ontological significance of specific monuments and representative sites are used for theoretical reflection. The development of a educational method is accompanied by action research.
The aim is to develop affective-material performative and educational practices and to critically examine them in relation to responsive reflexivity and affective sensibilities. The undertaking is understood as future-oriented “historical” work to deconstruct hegemonic orders of knowledge and to generate possibilities of alternative futures, solidarities and transformations.