| This phenomenological research study explores the "lived experiences" of seven Participants (Sitters and Observers) in the durational performance artwork The Artist is Present, performed by the artist Marina Abramovic and exhibited at the New York Museum of Modern Art from March through May of 2010. In the context of this study, The Artist is Present is defined as an aesthetic experience -- that is, an experience that engages the senses, perception, and imagination, and that activates and expands one's sense of possibility. Using this definition, this study also explores how the essence of an aesthetic experience may provide insight or expand our thinking about the underlying principles of learning and approaches to pedagogy. Specifically, this study is meant to challenge the "false finalities and total systems of thought" (Greene, 1995, p. 53) that restrict how learning is perceived and experienced. Rather, it is intended to offer a reconceptualization of learning as an aesthetic act -- a coming into knowing and being through feeling, sensing, perceiving, and participation that does not exclude rationality or criticality. It is a journey into, and search for, the spaces between the rigid, static, "sensible" structures that confine our thinking about learning and pedagogy -- and the aesthetic acts that may assist us in finding and exploring those spaces. Analyses of Participant interviews suggest at least four overarching and integrated themes: (1) A unique and powerful experience of an artwork and artist; (2) Aesthetic "Alchemy;" (3) Community, and; (4) Self and Being. Interpretive frameworks by Maxine Greene, John Baldacchino, Jacques Ranciere, and Elizabeth Ellsworth help to make sense of the essence of Participants' experiences, particularly as an aesthetic encounter that expands the horizon of our thinking regarding what it means to learn and "to be."... |
