{"id":2876,"date":"2021-09-20T16:43:25","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T15:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learningspaces.dundee.ac.uk\/dundeeuniculture\/?p=2876"},"modified":"2025-09-15T10:46:47","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T09:46:47","slug":"the-ignorant-art-school-cooper-gallery-welcomeweek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/the-ignorant-art-school-cooper-gallery-welcomeweek\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ignorant Art School: Cooper Gallery #WelcomeWeek"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ignorant Art School: Five Sit-ins towards Creative Emancipation<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Sit-in #1: Ruth Ewan<\/strong>
\nWe Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted to Be and It\u2019s Not Too Late to Change<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Sit-in Curriculum #1:<\/span><\/strong><\/a>
\nAutumn Term: 3 September \u2013 23 October 2021 (in-person and online)<\/p>\n

Exhibition:<\/strong>\u00a03 September \u2013 23 October 2021
\nAfternoon Preview:<\/a>\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>2 September, 3\u20137pm<\/a><\/span>Book free tickets via Eventbrite.\u00a0Exhibition<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Preview<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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___________________<\/em><\/p>\n

Cooper Gallery\u2019s major five-chapter exhibition and event project\u00a0The Ignorant Art School: Five Sit-ins towards Creative Emancipation<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0strides forward this autumn with a timely new exhibition by internationally celebrated Scottish artist Ruth Ewan.<\/p>\n

For\u00a0Sit-in #1<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0launched in February 2021 Ruth\u00a0Ewan\u00a0stated\u00a0We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted to Be and It\u2019s Not Too Late to Change<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0Foregrounding\u00a0the revolutionary potential of education and keeping step with the contemporary necessity for collective action, in collaboration with\u00a0The Ignorant Art School,\u00a0<\/em>Ewan<\/strong>\u00a0devised\u00a0<\/strong>a\u00a0two-month sequence of online\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>gatherings which activated radical forms of collaborative learning and grassroots knowledge creation. Deploying imagination in all its rich emancipatory power and literally unsettling the time and duration of conventional learning,\u00a0Sit-in Curriculum\u00a0#1<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0traversed multiple histories, alternative social structures and popular culture to empower a lucid pedagogy grounded in communities of care and resistance unconstrained by classroom hierarchies.<\/p>\n

Indexed by Dundee\u2019s historical connection with the 1789 French Revolution,\u00a0We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted to Be\u00a0and It\u2019s Not Too Late to Change<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0brings together evocative manifestations of revolutionary time with the creative energy of dissent. Featuring a decimal clock especially installed on the public fa\u00e7ade of Cooper Gallery, a virtual and physical perpetual Republican Calendar and an immersive installation\u00a0How Many Flowers Make the Spring?<\/em><\/strong>, Ewan\u2019s exhibition offers us a transcendent moment resonating with dissent and solidarity.<\/p>\n

Resetting time is an abiding and representative leitmotif of revolution and 1789 is its quintessential expression. Desiring to introduce a new \u2018civil era\u2019, the French Revolution secularised and rationalised time by abolishing the 24 hour day in favour of a decimalised 10 hour day and by renaming every month of the year to reflect not the names of Gods or Kings but nature, science and the labouring classes. Inherently political, this revolutionary reclaiming of time rings loud and clear in\u00a0We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted to Be\u00a0and It\u2019s Not Too Late to Change<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Featuring a new ambitious installation by Ewan,\u00a0How Many Flowers Make the Spring?,<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0weaves together oral histories and the personal recollections of activists involved in public moments of dissent with an indoor meadow-like landscape made of dried grasses and plants. Channelling the natural symbolism of the French Republican Calendar\u00a0How Many Flowers Make the Spring?<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0asks us to embrace liberty and freedom not as individualistic goals nor as distant utopian aims, but as collective trans-historic struggles to which we can all contribute and effect social change.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs flowers turn toward the sun, by dint of a secret heliotropism the past strives to turn toward that sun which is rising in the sky of history.\u201d (Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History IV, 1940)<\/p>\n

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___________________<\/p>\n

Artist Biography<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ruth Ewan<\/strong>\u00a0is an internationally celebrated artist whose research-led and critically engaged practice has drawn attention within contemporary art and socio-political history. Engaging with the circulation of radical ideas and social movements, her work explores the processes by which ideas take form and spread from individuals to society.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ignorant Art School: Five Sit-ins towards Creative Emancipation Sit-in #1: Ruth Ewan We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted to Be and It\u2019s Not Too Late to Change Sit-in Curriculum #1: Autumn Term: 3 September \u2013 23 October 2021 (in-person and online) Exhibition:\u00a03 September \u2013 23 October 2021 Afternoon Preview:\u00a02 September, 3\u20137pmBook free […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":550,"featured_media":2878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-djcad"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/550"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6276,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876\/revisions\/6276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}