Dagmar Mikešová

Man and Landscape in Art Education

Dagmar Mikešová – Department of Art, Visual Culture and Textile Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic

Abstract:

This poster presents a segment of the research project, “The Search for Man,” which is conducted in collaboration between faculty members and students from the Department of Art, Visual Culture and Textile Studies at the University of Hradec Králové (Tereza Severová, Kateřina Štěpánková, Petra Filipová, and Tomáš Moravec). The project is thematically focused on defining the concept of man from psychological, social, and biological perspectives. However, rather than drawing on the tradition of classical humanism, it seeks to engage with ideas and propositions that explore the conceptual (but also physical) boundaries of man from an external perspective, namely those of trans- and posthumanism. The objective of this phase of the research project was to ascertain how the younger generation (re)defines the concept of man by examining the boundary between the self and the non-self. The initial phase of the research project involved the administration of a questionnaire. The subsequent phase was conducted in the form of action research, specifically through tandem lessons. In this instance, the creative process inherent in art education was used as a vehicle for artistic exploration. The methodology employed in this phase of the research can be regarded as a hybrid, combining strategies drawn from action pedagogical research and artistic research. The first phase of the action pedagogical research used the principles of land art and its characteristic means of expression (space, nonwoven technical textiles, light and movement). The second phase was dedicated to the performative mapping of corporeality and its boundaries. The third phase dealt with the imprint of human activity, its transmission, and creative way of archiving, realized through experimental graphics. The results of the research confirm that a significant majority of respondents perceive the concept of man as something that cannot be clearly defined or delimited. According to the respondents, this notion transcends the dimensions of nature, microcosm and macrocosm, and is simultaneously influenced by the technological digital world, which penetrates human perception and alters our perception of the physical body and objective reality as such.