Education, Participation and the Making of the Subject

Education, Participation, and the Making of the Subject centres on Lange’s Work Studies in Schools (1976–77) and his shift from representation and towards participation and praxis. In this series, Lange explores the dialogic and transformative possibilities of video’s feedback for teaching and learning. His observational studies of teachers in the classroom are extended by videotaping the teachers’ and students’ assessments of these recordings. Rather than engaging in an examination of the image’s process of signification through structuralism, Lange grounds analysis in human experience and their understanding of work and class. His use of video, intervening in an existing pedagogic situation to bring about awareness and self-empowerment, draws inspiration from experimental pedagogies (Paulo Freire). The fundamental shift in the dynamics between the artist and his subjects situates this work within a lineage of post-studio, socially engaged, participatory art practices as theoretically defined by Claire Bishop, that sought to activate the role of the artist in society. The dialogical nature of Lange’s video raises issues to do with the methodological analysis of this work, whether it ought to be framed within the discourses of video—the notion of feedback, communications theories and participatory forms of documentary—or it belongs to the realm of relational and participatory practices as defined by Bishop.