Videoinsight® Magazine 2016|6

Videoinsight® Magazine 2016|6

Videoinsight® School Project
Education as Intuition, Care, Nourishment

The Project Videoinsight® School, curated by Tita Giunta and Lucia Centurelli, and supervised by Rebecca Russo, President of the Videoinsight® Art and Science Foundation, led contemporary art in Primary School for the first time: video art and performance were the basis for an innovative educational and instructional path. Today, Videoinsight® Magazine is presenting the first experience, closely linked to the video “Lux Mater”, documentation of an art performance by Beatriz Millar.

Learning, generally, appears suddenly, accompanied, in the subject, with a pleasant, and sometimes ecstatic, feeling to have finally achieved a genuine understanding. An acquisition of this kind can be taken internally as a real mode and can contribute, therefore, to transfer our consciousness towards new situations. Such a process is based, as well, on a kind of global insight: it’s like a foundational structure, the foundation of our evolution.

The memory tracks, in fact, are not isolated elements, but arranged agglomerates, blocks. They constitute full figures in continuous changing and in constant expansion: construction sites. Understanding of change and novelty is not an add of new signs to our store of knowledge, but a transformation to one form into another. Here is the original successful mutation, which can arise from experience or occur as a result of reflection, over time. In the case of artistic enjoyment, privileged sphere of the Videoinsight® Method created by Rebecca Russo, the latter two cases fit together.
The etymological root of the concept of education collects and mixes significantly the Latin versions of e-ducere (whose meaning is “get out”, “give birth”, “lead outside”) and edere (feed). education paradigm is the cure understood as help, guidance, orientation, design, support.

Not surprisingly, the first reference video for the Videoinsight® School Project curated by Lucia Centurelli and Tita Giunta, both Videoinsight® Method cuartors, was “Lux Mater” by Beatriz Millar. In this video, a documentation of an art performance, the artist mixes flour and ingredients, bakes cakes and bread. Reflecting on creative gestures and rituals, Beatriz Millar found in the preparation of bread, and through its gift as an elementary nourishment, the feminine power of creation. The artist questions, through this simple and atavistic gesture, about role-mutated, lost or acquired, in contemporary societies.

The Videoinsight® School Project has foreseen the Videoinsight® proposal and experience to pupils in elementary classes. The project was defined on the basis of psychological and individual needs, both individual and collective. After careful consideration on the specific needs of each group, realized through preliminary meeting with the reference teachers, the vision of Contemporary Art images of Videoinsight® High Impact has been proposed for the very first time to young students. Spontaneous narrative results and individual or collective interpretations from a first approach to contemporary art have been evaluated by the Videoinsight® experts and, later, conceptually and creatively reworked by children through bodily expression through theater-therapy settings.
In the case of this work based on Beatriz Millar’s videos – the first of three experiences of the Videoinsight® School Project – for the theater-setting prepared by Tita Giunta, the children were welcomed into a space, in front of a circle of dishes – each containing a loaf of clay. At the center, a rope creates a circular shape, with three large knots. Clay is a symbol of creation, intended as the mother earth. Before being used, it has been divided into many small pieces. With care and dedication, the students had to mix it with their oiled hands. It was proposed to mix the loaves of clay just like Beatriz Millar does in her video performance. The students had to create their own world: a ball with their favorite features: cracks, grooves, capes, holes. Then, it started an exchange: with the right hand, each participant has given his creation to his companion, with his left hand has received the gift of the companion; the worlds continued to circle until everyone got back his own world. Everyone explored carefully the world of the others, focusing on the diversities, specificities and uniqueness. Finally, the children were asked to place their own world on the rope. It was explained to them that the rope represented the class and that every child had to place his own world, by maintaining contacts with the rope: where was the position of every student in relationship with his own class and with the others?

Ivan Fassio

• October 3, 2016
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• Magazine, Training