Helena Sederholm

1.51 Lichen as a Teacher (Paper)

Helena Sederholm – Aalto University, Finland

Abstract:

Receding from anthropocentrism draws art education to examine its relation to other fields. Relations to natural sciences might bring us to unexpected territories. Sciences use human-based metaphors (Tauber 1995). Reciprocally, there should be possible to use nature metaphors in art education. We can think for example lichen as a teacher (see also Zollinger et al, 2022). A learning process could also be described through the concept of symbiosis. New bodies arise from symbiosis, in which independent organisms merge forming composites (such as lichen). Whereas Darwin emphasized competition as the primary driving process of evolution, symbio-genesis emphasizes that co-operation is also important. Art pedagogy can thus be thought of as lichen where varied things/ knowledge/ skills/ fields/ disciplines etc. create symbiosis. There’s a lot to learn from the growth of lichen, since a lichen forms a symbiotic hybrid colony of algae or cyanobacteria living with multiple fungi species. Lichens grow in a wide range of shapes and forms, to different directions. They live together with wood, stone, soil, air, and even human constructions. Lichens cannot be classified as plants or fungi which makes them ambiguous and queer creatures which echoes the concept of genre diversity (Griffiths, 2015). This is a parallel with non-linear pedagogy as an opposition of linear (evolutionary) pedagogy where learning contents are given, learning proceeds in phases, procedures are thought in advance, and the aim is to gain pre-determined skills. Instead, in non-linear learning there are undefined steps, seeking knowledge from varied sources, improvisation, open-endedness, emerging processes (Wells 2008; Sawyer 2018). Then using hybrid materials and incorporating digital and virtual features, (scientific or social) knowledge and ideas into new combinations will become easier. In my paper, I propose that we need symbiotic thinking and interdisciplinarity to cope with the current world. That is something lichen can teach us.