The vis­i­tors are miss­ing. Which vis­i­tors?

A re­flex­ion on the Sym­po­sium KUN­ST [auf] FÜHREN

The text parts from critique expressed by participants of the symposium KUNST[auf] FÜHREN in Kassel in June 2009: We had been talking about gallery education and had forgotten about the visitors, the public. Reflecting on the Symposium, the contribution focuses on the question, what had produced this absence and asks how «the visitor» can appear in educators' thinking about gallery education, in relation to the critique of paternalism in the discourse of inclusion and target groups, theories of performativity and the connection of theory and practice. After discussing the uncertainty in talking about «the visitor» the contribution argues for a reflexion on education between different positionalities and interests in projects that build long term collaborations with groups of participants, providing space for thinking about education itself within practice.

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