Teaching Labs and Online Resources – A case study on teaching performance art in Hong Kong

Teaching Labs – The Lee Wen Archive and Performance Art Local teachers were already familiar with the performance artworks by Serbian artist Marina Abramovic or New York-based Japanese artist Yoko Ono. Yet, they lack exposure to performance art development in Southeast Asia, which might be more relatable to local audiences. Using the archive of Lee Wen, the Teaching Labs started with a talk by our researcher Chương-Đài Võ on performance art in a Southeast Asian context. Her talk included the connections between drawing and performance art, the post-colonial identity formation, and orientalism. Collaborating with NTU CCA Singapore, a pedagogical guide was also developed to suggest different approaches to performance art education. Following the talk, a workshop was led by Anthony Leung Po Shan, a local artist-educator. The teachers took part in a performance art exercise designed by Anthony in relation to artistic practices explored in the talk. The teachers first participated in a tagging exercise to describe what they think, feel, observe and associate with a selection of performance artworks. Then, they were invited to conduct an experimental performance, which was to reset the furniture in the classroom to express their feelings towards their school’s administration. Through the case study of Lee Wen, the participating teachers developed a better understanding of performance art in Asia. With the hands-on workshop, they were empowered with confidence and started to take the initiative to introduce performance art in their classes. The teachers were then given a month to implement what they learned in the programme and gathered again later to share their teaching experiences. To further encourage mutual learning and facilitate the teaching of performance art, a teacher sharing session was organised one month after the workshop which allowed teachers to raise questions, share challenges and practices in classroom implementation. A learning community was formed during this peer-support process of co-learning and co-creation of teaching plans and trying out new ideas in their schools. Online Resources: teaching materials and mini courses Teaching materials Carmen Kwok, one of our participating teachers shared her teaching plan on AAA’s website. She implemented Anthony’s exercises in her class. In a tagging exercise, her students brainstormed keywords, such as #complaint, #search, #personal and #criticism around the performance artworks by Lee Wen. The process helped students to make sense of their feelings towards the artworks and showed them how performance art can be used for personal expression. Subsequently, the students were invited to use the classroom for a short performative work under the theme of “learning”. They re-organized the classroom setting for one day, including during lessons other than Visual Arts to express their thoughts on the current education system. Through these exercises, students were offered greater freedom to take initiative to explore a particular issue they closely relate to and be more critical to things that they have always taken granted for. Carmen also expressed that the exercise had helped students to develop their problem-solving skills, the ability to express and share, as well as empathy. As the audiences of the act include other subject teachers, this hands-on exercise also demonstrated to students how performance art can provoke conversation and construct meaningful discussions between different stakeholders in society. It showed Visual Art teachers that, other than the traditional one-way knowledge transmission, students can also be active agents in exploring and incorporating art into their daily life. Mini Course As a wrap up to the Teaching Labs series, AAA developed mini courses with contents from the programme. Materials include videos, handouts, keyword list, guiding questions etc. By making these resources available online for free, L&P furthers its impact and reach by continuing easy accessibility to resources for local educators who were unable to join the programme, as well as other practitioners around the world. The mini course series developed from Lee Wen Archive consists of three short videos that introduce the history of performance art in Singapore and Southeast Asia, and Lee Wen’s biography and works. Apart from enriching the educators’ knowledge in performance art, these materials can also be used in classrooms to facilitate students’ understanding of performance art. Conclusion By activating its collections for learning and teaching, AAA has encouraged teachers to be confident in teaching contemporary art in the classroom and built a supportive learning community. This community has the potential to be further activated to create a sustainable impact to even more educators and their students. The issue of lack of resources and materials on contemporary art of Asia in classrooms is not unique in Hong Kong, but an issue that needs to be addressed in the global classrooms. Building on the past ten-year endeavours in art education, AAA aspires to extend its reach through programmes and online resources, in partnership with like-minded organisations in the region, and collaboratively contribute to a more generous art history by expanding what is taught in classrooms around the world.