Art as Social Practice: Nap-Ins and Collective Dreaming for Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Women’s Resource Centre This presentation will be hands on and theoretical as it explores the socially engaged artworkings of the feminist art of the “Gestare Art Collective” and their on-going art practice they call Nap-Ins. Socially engaged art has roots in the late 60s, in the Happenings of Alan Kaprow, and feminist art practices. It has been developed by the performance and pedagogy of Charles Garoian and the work of feminist artist Suzanne Lacy and numerous others who have begun to articulate its place in the world of art and the community, as art, arts based research and education (Helguera, 2011). The Nap-Ins have co-emerged and evolved into an intertextual curricular space that includes the conscious and the unconscious, the known and the unknown, the past and the future, within a restorative and aesthetic experience. The ground of in-betweeness of the Nap-In, and the co-created Dream Scroll provides alternative sites of learning, where complicated conversations can be encountered and negotiated, verbally or non-verbally, through an arts-based aesthetic experience. A Dream Scroll for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies was started in the fall of 2013 at Southern Illinois University and will be added to during this presentation. This lunch hour will include an introduction to the social art practice of Nap Ins and the opportunity to contribute to a growing WGSS Dream Scroll. Sewing supplies and fabrics will be provided. Attendees are welcome to bring their own scrap fabric. Bio: Barbara Bickel, Ph.D is an artist, researcher, and educator. An Associate Professor in Art Education and Director of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Southern Illinois University, she teaches art as an inquiry and meaning making process. Her research interests include arts-based inquiry methods, collaboration, socially-engaged art, connective aesthetics, feminist art and pedagogy, adult learning, and restorative & transformative learning. She is currently conducting a study on the presence of art in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies programs in North America. She holds a BFA from U of Calgary. To view her art portfolio and arts-based research on-line visit http://www.barbarabickel.com or http://www.gestareartcollective.com

More information at http://www.ucalgary.ca/events/calendar/art-social-practice-nap-ins-and-collective-dreaming-women-gender-sexuality-studies