Rainer Ganahl

For the French philosopher Michel Serres education is concerned with a departure, a willingness to untether oneself from customary habits and kinfolk. ‘Departure’, he believes, ‘requires a rending that rips a part of the body from the part that still adheres to the shore where it was born.’ Such an account of pedagogy, while alluring, is sadly at odds with the realities of contemporary educational protocol, which is couched, above all, in the language of the market. Rather than learning being a voyage of exploration, as Serres would see it, the attainment of knowledge is now seen as a foothold on the corporate ladder.

While not subsumed in the language of learning as an idealized ‘discovery’, the work of New York-based artist Rainer Ganahl similarly engages with and critiques various systems of education, offering in part some indication of how the normative architectures of learning are more concerned with the self-preservation of an educational establishment than with offering a potentially critical methodology. In a series of works undertaken since the early 1990s Ganahl has analysed various levels of pedagogical engagement, from the stars of the academic élite to the labour-intensive qualities of self-taught language acquisition. A recent show at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, entitled ‘Please, Teach Me: Rainer Ganahl and the Politics of Learning’, brought together different strands in his work that focus on the communication of knowledge and the parameters of educational systems.

Ganahl’s work revolves around three key groups: the ‘Seminar/Lecture’ (S/L) series, the ‘Reading Seminars’ and his language studies (for example, Basic Japanese), all of which emanate from the early 1990s. In the ‘S/L’ series the dominant figures of art and critical theory are photographed in the context of their lectures or seminars. These images are testaments to the star system of intellectual labour, whereby these academic luminaries attract large, devoted audiences. One image from 2002 shows Rosalind Krauss starkly lit against a white backdrop, hand and head thrust upward: the authorial voice in action. However, rather than simply paying homage to these figures, the lens is also reversed to show the audience, often in awe, often quizzical, sometimes bored. Ganahl himself has described these images as ‘visual investigations’, and this is precisely their function – sociological indexes to a form of intellectual engagement through ‘choice’. But obviously this ‘choice’ is loaded, for access to these settings is determined by already negotiated conventions and rites of passage, and by the ability to pay tuition fees. Similarly the paradox of these leftist intellectuals being part of a global education-scape is not lost on Ganahl. Following Edward Said (who himself is photographed), Ganahl asks what the function of the intellectual is in contemporary terms.

As an adjunct to these formalized settings of intellectual engagement, since 1993 Ganahl has staged his own ‘Reading Seminars’. In these he becomes an interlocutor with his co-readers, reciting texts by the likes of Frantz Fanon and Karl Marx. Not necessarily part of any established educational structure, many participants are simply gallery visitors, curious individuals or, in the case of ‘Reading Frantz Fanon’, protesters at the G8 Summit in 2003. With the latter the readings took place on the street. There is a flexibility of approach to these works not found in the university settings, an openness partly determined by the necessities of place, the preconceived reputations of certain authors and the interests of the co-participants. These sometimes peripheral situations might allow new possibilities of encounter: there is the possibility that Ganahl’s practice highlights the ongoing dilemma of what the canonical texts of cultural studies and critical theory actually achieved. As institutionalized entities what do they offer?

Ganahl’s engagement with these questions is an optimistic approach. He is obviously fascinated by educational systems, the potential of texts and, above all, the drive to learn. The latter is most starkly illustrated in works such as Basic Arabic (2003), which demonstrate the laboriousness of language acquisition. A staggering achievement in its own right, Ganahl has studied a number of different languages, including Japanese, modern Greek, Russian, Korean, Chinese and Arabic. The works document the artist himself in the act of poring over study sheets. In these works videocassette boxes are displayed as empirical evidence of the process of learning – some 250 cassettes for the first 500 hours of learning basic Chinese, for example. Language in this sense is an endeavour, an arduous struggle – a factor key to the wider implications of this series. The will to learn is both practical and political, creating a cultural bridge and offering an entrance into various geographies denied to the tourist subject. Ganahl’s work is obviously part of the globalized cultural economy, but his itinerant status has led him to recognize the place of language, and learning, in terms of social exchange. Once again his ability to ‘speak’ is part of the entrance into specific local contexts and thus the root of dialogue.

And this is how ‘education’ in Ganahl’s practice could be read – as the right to a voice. Although his numerous approaches are obviously framed by the historical conventions of education, subsumed within these various structures are the conditions for an autonomous, critical pedagogy. As Ganahl himself has claimed: ‘A multicultural, pluralistic, democratic, non-arrogant, inclusive policy of education open to heterogeneity is essential for society to survive.’