Melissa Bremmer and Emiel Heijnen discuss the philosophies behind their book Wicked Arts Assignments: Practising Creativity in Contemporary Arts Education (2020), and how the assignment as artwork can help facilitate students’ creative processes.
Drawing from the Fluxus movement of the 1960s and 70s and the instructional do it exhibitions conceived by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier in 1993, Bremmer and Heijnen consider the ways “enabling constraints” can help in designing “wicked arts assignments”.
In doing so, they show how enabling constraints can help students kickstart their creative process, without becoming overdetermined by a prescribed end product.
As a duo, Professor Melissa Bremmer and Professor Emiel Heijnen lead the Research Group Arts Education at the Amsterdam University of the Arts, the Netherlands.
This film is part of SHIFT, Freelands Foundation’s quarterly series of short films spotlighting varied practices, approaches and philosophies within art education.
Captions and editing: Sixbetween.
All audiovisual material and research is courtesy of the artist.