Art keeps us in and with the World: Gert Biesta in Conversation with Lisbet Skregelid

Abstract

This chapter is a conversation between Lisbet Skregelid and Gert J. J. Biesta. The point of departures are texts by Biesta that touch upon issues related to art and art education. In the conversation, Biesta tells about his concerns and worries about art and also education disappearing from art education. He refers to how art in education tend to be justified because of its usefulness for something else, and also how art sometimes becomes both too child – and student-centered focusing on expression and emergence and also too curriculum centered. Biesta proposes a world centered education that is holding the child in what he calls the middle ground as a place where human existence in and with the world can take place. He argues that art can offer qualities of interruption, of suspension and sustenance, thereby demonstrating the educative power of the arts.