The idea of threshold concepts developed by Meyer and Land (2003) in the context of the ETL (Enhancing Teaching Learning environments) project, Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (3): implications for course design and evaluation paper (Rust, 2005) introduced me to concepts embodied as akin to a portal opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking, representing a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress. Threshold concepts defined as potentially transformative points in the student`s learning experience can also entail a shift in the student`s identity. The result may be that students remain stuck in an ‘in-between’ state termed as a state of ‘liminality’, from the Latin meaning within the threshold. Threshold concepts as crucial gateways to mastering a discipline require learners to accept the loss of earlier the security of a previously held conceptual stance to enter less familiar and sometimes disconcerting new territory.
Encountering Jannis Kounellis`s installation, a physical blockage of a threshold (currently on display at the Tate Modern) resonated with me notions of the troublesome learning space that students reach within the context of professional practice and the relativity of their own discipline/subject of study to the real-world relationships, opportunities and constraints. Opting for an experiential work-based additional year between 2nd and final year study the portal from academic study to the year-in-industry often appears bricked up rendering this transition unsettling and disorienting. The complexities of the transformation that students undergo is particularly evident within this stage of liminality as they are stepping out of main study and experiencing a shift in their creative identity and positionality that active learning and professional practice entail.
Every time this work is displayed it is always installed in a doorway, performing the same physical blockage of the threshold. The artist`s instruction are to use stones that are sourced locally from the place where the work is exhibited. The way is executed in a simple masonry style using blocks of irregular sizes, often seen in a farmland walls, and appears out of place in a gallery interior.
Kounellis`s instructions to use stones that are sourced locally from the place where the work every time is exhibited brings the real, natural life into the gallery setting. Reminiscent of farmland walls, the work interrelates with the specificity of the location the stones are originated from as a one-off event that in itself is in a perpetual state of becoming, never fixed but ever shifted and reconfigured since the first time was conceived and exhibited in 1969. Each stone block, a living entity colonised by invisible yet active micro-organisms, is telling when you look closely; discoloration, irregularities, erosion, moss and algae build up, all the physical attributes of a material that speaks of the topography, the endless interactions that support life, the natural and man-made features of the place that the work is displayed. Open to interpretation, what constitutes this physical blockage of the threshold is the tension between choice and non-choice, resolution and irresolution, permanence and impermanence bringing into play a reality effect that echoes the human experience and collective memory, a metaphor of liminality, a middle stage of a rite of initiation to enter a new territory, a way of thinking, a state of being continuously subject to chance and change. An embodiment of ‘the passage of human history, of the changing of the human self and its products’ (Thomas McEvilley, 1986).
Similarly, in my teaching context it is that troublesome learning space and blockage of the threshold that can influence powerful transformative points in the student experience and positioning of self in relation to their subject of study and worldview. Helping students to develop genuine understanding of a troublesome concept means to also prompt students to engage with personal knowledge to restore continuity between their discipline and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognised to constitute experience. It is imperative therefore the learning environment to facilitate the connections between lived experience and world of practice opening up a field of possibilities that the creative activity as an ongoing process of becoming and future learning can take place.
Apart from the need of integrative learning environments and opportunities for active student engagement, structured guidance, application and discussion, to help students accept the troublesome nature of a threshold concept as an essential part of the learning process also necessitates deep listening. ‘This requires to cultivating third ear that listens not for what the student knows (discrete packages of knowledge) but for the terms that shape a student`s knowledge, her not knowing, her forgetting, her circles of stuck places and resistances’ (Ellsworth1997:71). Addison adds, there has been much discussion of the importance of ‘not knowing’ within art education; ‘a kind of liminal space where not knowing is not only not overcome, but sought, explored and savoured; where failure, boredom, frustration and getting lost are constructively deployed alongside wonder, secrets and play‘. A set of productive dialectic practices, highlighting the difficulties and delights of learning through continuous making, a process of never quite reaching goals (Addison, 2014).
References
Bachelard G. (1958) The Poetics of Space. Boston, Massachussets: Beacon Press, pp 223
Mcevilley T. (1986) Essay: Mutual Prophecies: The Art of Jannis Kounellis, Jannis Kounellis, Exhibition Organized by Mary Jane Jacob. Publisher: Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art
Rust C. (2005) Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (3)*: Implications for Course Design and Evaluation, Improving Student Learning Diversity and Inclusivity. Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, pp 53–63
Further References/Reading:
Baudrillard J. (1968) The System of Objects. London: Verso
Christov-Bakargiev C. (1999) Arte-Povera. London: Phaidon Press
Dewey J. (1934) Art as Experience. New York: Penguin Group
Dewey J. (1938) Experience and Education. New York: Free Press
Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) Heterotopia (space). Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotopia_(space)
Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) Liminality. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality
Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) PBL (Problem Based Learning). Available at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem-based_learning
Hanh T.N. (2013) The Art of Communicating. London: Penguin Random House UK
Hunt J.D. (2022) Genius Loci: An Essay on the Meanings of Place. London: Reaktion Books
Meyer JHF and Land R (2005) Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (2) –
Epistemological Considerations and a Conceptual Framework for Teaching and Learning, Source: Higher Education, Vol. 49, No3, Issues in Teaching ad Learning from a Student Learning Perspective : A Tribute to Noel Entwistle, pp. 373–388
Steward S. (2019) The Ruins Lessons. Meaning and Material in Western Culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
Winnicott, DH (1971) Playing and Reality. New York: Basic Books