This article is based on our introspective joint study of the specific teaching philosophy and pr... more This article is based on our introspective joint study of the specific teaching philosophy and practices developed at the Pori unit of the former University of Art and Design, now known as the School of Art, Design and Architecture at Aalto University, between 2006 and 2014. Our goal is to verbalize and share our experience, which we call Pori pedagogy, or PoPeda. Was it just an accident or was there some logic to the formation of the staff and PoPeda? Was PoPeda due to the geographic distance, its isolated position and the small size of the unit-or was there something more substantial to it? Like the protagonist of Rancière's Ignorant Schoolmaster, Joseph Jacotot, during our joint teaching processes and this study, we have learned in practice how to teach what we do not know, and also how to teach ourselves to learn more, including the way students on this kind of shared trip course bring in a lot of knowledge. To be fully appreciated, this skill should be shown to new protagonists of their own pedagogical life. The story can be told, and it is a beautiful one. We are all now more ready than ever to create a pedagogical revolution.
There has been a continual relationship, for a significant period of time, between art, excess, a... more There has been a continual relationship, for a significant period of time, between art, excess, and education. This entanglement has been dependent upon the specific context, the social and political order, and available discourse at that time. Of course, each of these concepts, 'art, excess, and education,' are contested terrains in themselves, and include multiple, complex, and contradictory perspectives that cannot be reduced to a homogeneous body. However, while art and education have their own histories, trajectories, and discourses (and indeed are sutured together as one field-'art education'), the concept of excess requires an initial, discursive exploration. For example, one of the most conventional ways excess has been defined, comprehended, and deployed is through a particular magnitude or overabundance of 'something' on a predetermined scale. This discursive formation seems to imply that excess is not only the opposite of a lesser amount, or lack of 'something,' but also what is considered beyond a particular understanding of moderation or balance.
Discourses on middle class taste, lifestyle and 'aesthetics' have emphasized how middle class age... more Discourses on middle class taste, lifestyle and 'aesthetics' have emphasized how middle class agents orient to mark their position by appropriating 'legitimate' cultural goods and practices and eschewing 'illegitimate' ones. This paper examines what could be learned, if the analytical perspective is broadened and shifted from the sociocultural distinction games between collective class agents to actual situated performances, and the stylistic and expressive means, with which middle class agents relate themselves also to their own class and to its-sometimes troublesomecultural, aesthetic and moral conventions and expectations. We formulate one version of such a reflexively relational approach to the complexities of middle class agency and its performative enactment. By utilizing analytical tools originally developed by Erving Goffman, and applied here to analyze some excerpts from the film American Beauty, we demonstrate how aesthetic performativity oriented to the 'downplaying' of class distinctions can be used by middle class agents to pursue authenticity and to resist, and gain experiential distance from, the agonizing middle class roles, expectations and 'principals' readily surrounding them. 'taste'. Viewed from the perspective of the arguments commonly put forward in the discussions on middle class taste, lifestyle and 'aesthetics', including the assumption that middle class agents orient to mark their position by appropriating 'legitimate' cultural goods and practices, Lester's pursuit to reconfigure his middle class lifestyle illustrates a peculiar pattern and logic. He discounts the economic and utilitarian-materialistic embodiments of middle class lifestyle, but is not particularly interested in the cultivation of various 'legitimate' registers of culture either. Instead, he downplays, and pursues distance from, a range of middle class lifestyle distinctions and markers that have a bearing on his identity, agency and experience, as an agent who is publicly recognized, and positioned, as belonging to the middle class, and to its economic-utilitarian fraction.
Edited Monographies Forthcoming, with Elisabetta Di Stefano and Carsten Friberg, eds, Appearances... more Edited Monographies Forthcoming, with Elisabetta Di Stefano and Carsten Friberg, eds, Appearances of the Political. Berlin: (probably) Springer (in review), 2021 (est). Zoltan Somhegyi & Max Ryynänen, eds, Aesthetics in Dialogue: Applying Philosophy of Art in a Global World. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020. Kevin Tavin, Mira Kallio-Tavin & Max Ryynänen, eds, Art, Excess, and Education: Historical and Discursive Contexts. New York: Palgrave, 2019. With Jozef Kovalcik, eds, Aesthetics of Popular Culture. Bratislava: Slovart Publishing, 2014. With Tarja Knuuttila, eds, Umberto Eco: James Joyce, Teräsmies ja vesinokkaeläin. (Umberto Eco, Superman and the Platypus.) Helsinki: Yliopistopaino, 2005.
Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Academic Language and Learning (JALL), an e-jour... more Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Academic Language and Learning (JALL), an e-journal dedicated to the interests of staff who provide academic language and learning development to students and staff in tertiary education settings. This issue is a combination of a regular article and book review, and a number of papers which were presented at the Eighth Biennial National Conference of the Association for Academic Language and Learning. The conference papers in this issue are the ones which managed to complete the reviewing and editorial process in time to meet the publication deadline for this issue, and will be introduced by the Special Editor for the Conference Proceedings below. It is expected that additional papers from the conference will be published in the next issue of the Journal.
The discourse on kitsch has changed tone. The concept, which in the early 20th century referred m... more The discourse on kitsch has changed tone. The concept, which in the early 20th century referred more to pretentious pseudo-art than to cute everyday objects, was attacked between the World Wars by theorists of modernity (e.g. Greenberg on Repin). The late 20th century scholars gazed at it with critical curiosity (Eco, Kulka, Calinescu). What we now have is a profound interest in and acceptance of cute mass-produced objects. It has become marginal to use the concept to criticize pseudo-art. Scholars who write about kitsch are no longer against it (Anderson, Olalquiaga). And since the 2000s, art students have been telling us that they “love kitsch”. The contemporary concept is strongly attached to certain colors (pink) and materials (porcelain). In this article I aspire to find some keys on how to view the history and contemporary state of the concept. My hypothesis is that the change in the use of the concept has at least partly to do with changes in the concept of art, which has lat...
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) This material is protected by copyright and other intellectual p... more Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) This material is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, and duplication or sale of all or part of any of the repository collections is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for your research use or educational purposes in electronic or print form. You must obtain permission for any other use. Electronic or print copies may not be offered, whether for sale or otherwise to anyone who is not an authorised user. Ryynänen, Max
In Kitsch and Art Tomas Kulka notes that natural landscapes cannot be called kitsch. Kitsch needs... more In Kitsch and Art Tomas Kulka notes that natural landscapes cannot be called kitsch. Kitsch needs to be produced by a human being, he says. I agree with that. Experience-wise it is more complicated, though. Sometimes kitsch affects our experience of landscapes. It is not just that our overwhelming culture of images affects how we see nature, but that also sugared, sentimental and stereotypical kitsch images of nature, that we see in postcards and social media, affect our experience of e.g. sunsets and picturesque landscapes. We might desire to fight back, but at least we need to understand and to some extent accept our situation. Kitsch is in our experience even when there is no kitsch around, and our experiences of nature prove that.
Distance has from time to time been discussed in aesthetics, e.g. as a necessary component in the... more Distance has from time to time been discussed in aesthetics, e.g. as a necessary component in the experience of the sublime (Kant) and the aura (Benjamin). It looks like photographs/films are able to cut distance physically and time-wise, but that this does not necessarily lead to emphatic engagement (Sontag, Butler). Thinking about the amount of news images we see, it is interesting how little we discuss this phenomenon. Artists sometimes aspire to cut this distance by searching for new ways of representing e.g. war. In my text I will try to analyze distance as an aesthetic topic. I also discuss Anssi Pulkkinen’s project Streetview (Reassembled), where a ruined house was imported from Syria to Europe, to make the war more comprehensible. I believe reflecting on distance could have both aesthetic and political significance.
This article is based on our introspective joint study of the specific teaching philosophy and pr... more This article is based on our introspective joint study of the specific teaching philosophy and practices developed at the Pori unit of the former University of Art and Design, now known as the School of Art, Design and Architecture at Aalto University, between 2006 and 2014. Our goal is to verbalize and share our experience, which we call Pori pedagogy, or PoPeda. Was it just an accident or was there some logic to the formation of the staff and PoPeda? Was PoPeda due to the geographic distance, its isolated position and the small size of the unit-or was there something more substantial to it? Like the protagonist of Rancière's Ignorant Schoolmaster, Joseph Jacotot, during our joint teaching processes and this study, we have learned in practice how to teach what we do not know, and also how to teach ourselves to learn more, including the way students on this kind of shared trip course bring in a lot of knowledge. To be fully appreciated, this skill should be shown to new protagonists of their own pedagogical life. The story can be told, and it is a beautiful one. We are all now more ready than ever to create a pedagogical revolution.
There has been a continual relationship, for a significant period of time, between art, excess, a... more There has been a continual relationship, for a significant period of time, between art, excess, and education. This entanglement has been dependent upon the specific context, the social and political order, and available discourse at that time. Of course, each of these concepts, 'art, excess, and education,' are contested terrains in themselves, and include multiple, complex, and contradictory perspectives that cannot be reduced to a homogeneous body. However, while art and education have their own histories, trajectories, and discourses (and indeed are sutured together as one field-'art education'), the concept of excess requires an initial, discursive exploration. For example, one of the most conventional ways excess has been defined, comprehended, and deployed is through a particular magnitude or overabundance of 'something' on a predetermined scale. This discursive formation seems to imply that excess is not only the opposite of a lesser amount, or lack of 'something,' but also what is considered beyond a particular understanding of moderation or balance.
Discourses on middle class taste, lifestyle and 'aesthetics' have emphasized how middle class age... more Discourses on middle class taste, lifestyle and 'aesthetics' have emphasized how middle class agents orient to mark their position by appropriating 'legitimate' cultural goods and practices and eschewing 'illegitimate' ones. This paper examines what could be learned, if the analytical perspective is broadened and shifted from the sociocultural distinction games between collective class agents to actual situated performances, and the stylistic and expressive means, with which middle class agents relate themselves also to their own class and to its-sometimes troublesomecultural, aesthetic and moral conventions and expectations. We formulate one version of such a reflexively relational approach to the complexities of middle class agency and its performative enactment. By utilizing analytical tools originally developed by Erving Goffman, and applied here to analyze some excerpts from the film American Beauty, we demonstrate how aesthetic performativity oriented to the 'downplaying' of class distinctions can be used by middle class agents to pursue authenticity and to resist, and gain experiential distance from, the agonizing middle class roles, expectations and 'principals' readily surrounding them. 'taste'. Viewed from the perspective of the arguments commonly put forward in the discussions on middle class taste, lifestyle and 'aesthetics', including the assumption that middle class agents orient to mark their position by appropriating 'legitimate' cultural goods and practices, Lester's pursuit to reconfigure his middle class lifestyle illustrates a peculiar pattern and logic. He discounts the economic and utilitarian-materialistic embodiments of middle class lifestyle, but is not particularly interested in the cultivation of various 'legitimate' registers of culture either. Instead, he downplays, and pursues distance from, a range of middle class lifestyle distinctions and markers that have a bearing on his identity, agency and experience, as an agent who is publicly recognized, and positioned, as belonging to the middle class, and to its economic-utilitarian fraction.
Edited Monographies Forthcoming, with Elisabetta Di Stefano and Carsten Friberg, eds, Appearances... more Edited Monographies Forthcoming, with Elisabetta Di Stefano and Carsten Friberg, eds, Appearances of the Political. Berlin: (probably) Springer (in review), 2021 (est). Zoltan Somhegyi & Max Ryynänen, eds, Aesthetics in Dialogue: Applying Philosophy of Art in a Global World. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020. Kevin Tavin, Mira Kallio-Tavin & Max Ryynänen, eds, Art, Excess, and Education: Historical and Discursive Contexts. New York: Palgrave, 2019. With Jozef Kovalcik, eds, Aesthetics of Popular Culture. Bratislava: Slovart Publishing, 2014. With Tarja Knuuttila, eds, Umberto Eco: James Joyce, Teräsmies ja vesinokkaeläin. (Umberto Eco, Superman and the Platypus.) Helsinki: Yliopistopaino, 2005.
Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Academic Language and Learning (JALL), an e-jour... more Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Academic Language and Learning (JALL), an e-journal dedicated to the interests of staff who provide academic language and learning development to students and staff in tertiary education settings. This issue is a combination of a regular article and book review, and a number of papers which were presented at the Eighth Biennial National Conference of the Association for Academic Language and Learning. The conference papers in this issue are the ones which managed to complete the reviewing and editorial process in time to meet the publication deadline for this issue, and will be introduced by the Special Editor for the Conference Proceedings below. It is expected that additional papers from the conference will be published in the next issue of the Journal.
The discourse on kitsch has changed tone. The concept, which in the early 20th century referred m... more The discourse on kitsch has changed tone. The concept, which in the early 20th century referred more to pretentious pseudo-art than to cute everyday objects, was attacked between the World Wars by theorists of modernity (e.g. Greenberg on Repin). The late 20th century scholars gazed at it with critical curiosity (Eco, Kulka, Calinescu). What we now have is a profound interest in and acceptance of cute mass-produced objects. It has become marginal to use the concept to criticize pseudo-art. Scholars who write about kitsch are no longer against it (Anderson, Olalquiaga). And since the 2000s, art students have been telling us that they “love kitsch”. The contemporary concept is strongly attached to certain colors (pink) and materials (porcelain). In this article I aspire to find some keys on how to view the history and contemporary state of the concept. My hypothesis is that the change in the use of the concept has at least partly to do with changes in the concept of art, which has lat...
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) This material is protected by copyright and other intellectual p... more Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) This material is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, and duplication or sale of all or part of any of the repository collections is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for your research use or educational purposes in electronic or print form. You must obtain permission for any other use. Electronic or print copies may not be offered, whether for sale or otherwise to anyone who is not an authorised user. Ryynänen, Max
In Kitsch and Art Tomas Kulka notes that natural landscapes cannot be called kitsch. Kitsch needs... more In Kitsch and Art Tomas Kulka notes that natural landscapes cannot be called kitsch. Kitsch needs to be produced by a human being, he says. I agree with that. Experience-wise it is more complicated, though. Sometimes kitsch affects our experience of landscapes. It is not just that our overwhelming culture of images affects how we see nature, but that also sugared, sentimental and stereotypical kitsch images of nature, that we see in postcards and social media, affect our experience of e.g. sunsets and picturesque landscapes. We might desire to fight back, but at least we need to understand and to some extent accept our situation. Kitsch is in our experience even when there is no kitsch around, and our experiences of nature prove that.
Distance has from time to time been discussed in aesthetics, e.g. as a necessary component in the... more Distance has from time to time been discussed in aesthetics, e.g. as a necessary component in the experience of the sublime (Kant) and the aura (Benjamin). It looks like photographs/films are able to cut distance physically and time-wise, but that this does not necessarily lead to emphatic engagement (Sontag, Butler). Thinking about the amount of news images we see, it is interesting how little we discuss this phenomenon. Artists sometimes aspire to cut this distance by searching for new ways of representing e.g. war. In my text I will try to analyze distance as an aesthetic topic. I also discuss Anssi Pulkkinen’s project Streetview (Reassembled), where a ruined house was imported from Syria to Europe, to make the war more comprehensible. I believe reflecting on distance could have both aesthetic and political significance.
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