Part exhibition catalogue, part artists’ book, and part candy store advertisement, Multiple Elementary explores the elementary school classroom as a site for the invention and reception of contemporary art practices. The book explores aesthetic and representative possibilities for process-based and publicly oriented artworks, especially amidst the complications and contradictions inherent to collaborations with children.
Contributors take-up adult-child relationships, the wildness of children and the contact-high they offer to artists attempting to recuperate wonder, failure, and queerness in their work. The commissioned texts also explore the reception of childrens’ art outside of the classroom, the unruly behavior of artist multiples and taste-making in relationship to the “Other.” Finally, a lexicon for curatorial, pedagogical and feminist-material-discursivity is offered to further locate Multiple Elementary amongst larger cultural questions.
With contributions by: Lorna Brown, Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik, Mark Clintberg, Jack Halberstam, Sydney Hermant, Vesna Krstich, Chris Lee, Stephanie Springgay, and Maiko Tanaka.
Softcover, pefect-bound, colour.