pedagogy research
In 1933, John Andrew Rice founded Black Mountain College, located in Black Mountain, North Carolina. The college existed for some twenty years before permanently closing in 1957. My own interest in Black Mountain College is an impetus in exploring experimental pedagogies.
The complex history of the college’s short but compelling life provides the broader backdrop of this research project. The critical and creative practices that took place at Black Mountain help think us reconsider pedagogical frameworks in a contemporary context. Although the college wasn’t employing digital technologies, they were pushing the boundaries of the technologies they employed and the proverbial techne at large. The underdeveloped part of this project wants to ask how the pedagogical, critical, and creative practices of Black Mountain can be relevant for today’s environment?
In the video essay, we are introduced to a scene from Pedro Reyes’ “Baby Marx” series. We see still images from Josef Albers “Leaf Studies,” completed while he and his wife were at Black Mountain. This is followed by archival images of the college as well as an image from the cover sheet of Black Mountain’s now declassified FBI file. We hear the voice of potter Robert Turner, who established the studio pottery program at Black Mountain. We read text about the foundation of the college’s mission, as written in John Rice’s biography. I follow this with audio-visual material from the Encyclopaedia Brittanica classroom films and a short animation from Phil Mulloy. The voice of sculptor George Kokis, plays over those images. While he was less associated with Black Mountain, he was a colleague of one of the most underrated figures there, M.C. Richards. To close, we hear M.C.’s voice -- she was faculty of the English Department at Black Mountain and then served as the College’s Faculty chair for a number of years. I invoke her to conclude in order to emphasize her importance at the College. In discussion and reflection around Black Mountain, many minority figures are overshadowed by focus on popular names like John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, Charles Olson, David Tudor, Buckminster Fuller.
M.C.’s ideas emphasize art as making and process as key. To apply this in pedagogical practice means taking art outside of the studio and into all facets of our lives, especially our institutions. Black Mountain, although short-lived, attempted to do this. Of course, it had its limits and problems (as I pointed out earlier in a reading response). However, its legacy and the existence of other schools and communities like it remind us of the facetious phrase from Adam Smith in Pedro Reyes’ “Baby Marx”: “If you think carefully about your consumer choices and the labor practices of the products that you purchase then you can help…”. This overt economic language is necessary to begin rethinking current pedagogical paradigms and educational paradigms as well. Imbuing these concepts with those that emerge in figuring Black Mountain may be a way to practice democracy differently, or at least, to practice not knowing and still trusting for the sake of intellectual and emotional development.
[a video essay]
Works cited (in order of appearance)
Black Mountain College. (1933). Black Mountain College: A Foreword (Reprinted from the First Catalogue, 1933). Retrieved from http://blackmountaincollegeproject.org/PUBLICATIONS/PUBLICATIONS%20CHRONOLOGY.htm
Dylan, B. (1970). All the Tired Horses. On Self Portrait (album). New York: Columbia Records.
Reyes, P. (2011, November 8). Marx and Smith Break pt. I (video). Retrieved from http://www.babymarx.com.
Josef Albers (c.1940). Leaf Studies I-V (prints). Retrieved from http://albersfoundation.org/art/josef-albers/leaf-studies/#slide6
Zwerling, H.S. (n.d.). “Studies Building, Black Mountain College” (photograph). Retrieved from http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/mss/bmcmac/default_bmcmac.html
Winslow, K. (n.d.). “Setting of the College in the mountains on the slope of the Blue Ridge”. Retrieved from http://cdm15733.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15733coll6/id/9/rec/10.
Elliston, J. (2015). FBI investigation of Black Mountain College revealed in newly released file. Retreived from http://carolinapublicpress.org/23088/fbi-investigation-of-black-mountain-college-revealed-in-newly-released-file/
Kane, R. and M. Lewis-Kane. (Producers). (2010). M.C. Richards: The Fire Within [Motion picture]. (Available from Kane-Lewis Productions, 189 Rope Ferry Road, Sedgwick, ME 04676)
Reynolds, K.C. (1998). Visions and Vanities: John Andrew Rice of Black Mountain College. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Encyclopaedia Britannica Films. (Producer). (1945). Democracy: An ERPI Classroom Film. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Mulloy, P. (Director and producer) (1991). The Conformist (Cowboys series). UK: British Film Institute.
Gsmac. (2007, July 8). Lily’s inchworm. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUQ_SMCCPN4
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