Recomendaciones de diseño para la vivienda de montaña

Asking students to draw attention to the “voices” and “texts” present in their cases, in the critical readings they undertook and in their performances, proved to be a dynamic and fruitful way to examine rhetoric, authority, tradition and objectivity at play, both in the case material received, and in their approach to working with it. As mentioned in the previous section, during the second session of CILM, I had drawn attention not just to the content of what the character in one group had said, but the way the she said it – in that instance, with an

imitation London cockney accent. I continued this line in our critical discussions throughout the remaining sessions, asking students not just to critically analyse written texts, but also to extend their analysis to spoken texts, specifically, the formats and styles of the speech used, and even to silent texts, present by virtue of their glaring absence. Perhaps a little more at home with a textual rather than physical or material approach, students got to work on this area with gusto and some rather surprising elements emerged.

About halfway through the term, during our weekly practice presentations, one group performed a very interesting piece. The entire performance was

conducted on a dedicated social media site (a Facebook page). The performers sat amongst the audience and performed the show by discretely writing

messages and uploading pre-recorded digital videos in real time from their devices to the overhead screen in the classroom. One student would upload a video, another would comment on it, another would upload a pre-recorded spoof video the group had made in answer to the comment (in one instance,

intertextually referencing a video of a pop icon who had produced an apology video that had “gone viral”) and so on. This was quite fascinating as the case dealt with a public relations scandal and so the performance medium – the disembodied Facebook page, was entirely apropos, itself performing much of the content it was set up to critique.

At one point, one video uploaded included a student performer giving a politician’s speech, whilst simultaneously, subtitles of what the character was supposedly really intending, but neglecting to say outright, were filling the bottom of the screen. This moment in the performance comprised of several critical elements, which became part of an avid class discussion on the entire performance upon its completion. Firstly, the use of social media performance and performativity to discuss public relations. Rather than talk about critical issues alone, here the students’ work was more aligned with Spivak’s notion of “doing it in the teaching”, or in this case in the performing. The practice itself demonstrated the pace, ferocity and lack of control of information that the issues of the case raised. The content, in the form of the videos and comments

uploaded was well researched and engaging. I was particularly struck by the use of subtitles as a means of adding multiple critical registers and as a way to show the gap between speech and intention. In discussion I mentioned this and one of the group members, a little shyly – as if caught out – said she had seen the use of subtitles in this way on a popular television series. Furthermore, she had

brought it to the group in the hope that they might “steal it”. I asked her why she reported this part of the practice so coyly. Several other students chimed in that it was because the idea was not “original”. This allowed for a new conversation on the flow of information and ideas, copy, original and simulacra and other such diffractive topics to be introduced.

The student cited her idea as coming from a popular series called The Revolution Will Be Televised, which was airing concurrently, and how she’d thought it could be modified for use in her group’s presentation. I responded that the

modification had shown her ability to interweave class with “the real world” and that it demonstrated she had understood the critical issues on rhetoric, observed them in her everyday life and furthermore had gone on to embed these within another everyday life reality of the students as a whole – the performances and performativities associated with Facebook.

This student’s practice gave me the opportunity to weave notions of thinking critically outside of the classroom, in the everyday life of the students, as a vital

part of CILM. If they could start to bring in and use materials and discourses that they engaged with in their own social and cultural everyday, they would be truly engaging with the ethos of the course. Here again notions of permission

emerged as being given ‘permission’ to bring in their own worlds, and here in particular the popular cultural worlds students engaged with, not only produced a wealth of new avenues in students’ performances from that moment on, but also perhaps was responsible for a change in the way students participated. I remember noting that not only did students enthusiasm increase, but that they began to take more risks with their performances. At first sometimes these risks rendered performance ideas a little inscrutable – perhaps becoming too private, like an ‘in-joke’ – but ultimately raised the overall standard of the performances and the students’ awareness and inclusion of everyday materials and texts in their work. I argue that perhaps the double-bind mentioned earlier in this chapter, between being asked to do something that in some ways they were not in reality allowed to do, began to loosen a little as students were given

permission to voice their own worlds through their approach to performing their case study analyses.

Speaking directly to this, an interesting phenomenon emerged in one group’s final assessed performance. This group had chosen to script and play a more traditional style of performance in contrast to the other groups’ poker game and in the round with audience participation. They created a play, complete with program, called A Day in the Life of Ed, a somewhat satirical piece on the re-

named Prime Minister deciding to go ahead with the commissioning of Hinckley. In their report, the group mentioned:

As this is the first nuclear construction since the Fukushima disaster in 2011 and so is highly controversial, we wanted to offer the perspective of a group vehemently opposed to it. This is why we selected Greenpeace, as they would bring this environmental dimension to the argument, this also being an inherently long-term view which challenges (but doesn’t defeat) the myopia of the government.

We believed that the public point of view was one of the most significant to capture as the government is ultimately accountable and subject to them. Their importance is encapsulated even in the sequence of the presentation – it begins with the government, but ends with the public. We gave their concerns authority by featuring an analyst who questions the efficacy of the deal from the public’s point of view, noting the

privatisation of the project’s profits as compared with the nationalisation of its risks. Ed’s reaction to this shows imperviousness to the public’s view, despite supporting authority.

Here, the group have clearly taken the risk of not just showing all stakeholder perspectives in their text, but clearly, in the performance at least, have taken a side. In this moment, the voice emerging is their own, particularly, as Warwick students in a wider world. Quoting from the script:

Jane [the PMs secretary and “a member of the public”]: You didn’t really push him on the points Greenpeace made!

Ed [the PM]: He’s investing billions into the UK economy and helping keeping the country going, I don’t want to anger him.

Jane: But the public aren’t happy, and that’s who you’re here to serve, not big business or yourself!

Ed: The public don’t always know what’s best for them. That’s why you have politicians who know what needs to be done.

Jane: Just because they didn’t go to Oxford, doesn’t mean they don’t know what they want! Look at this news report that was on earlier! (picks up remote control and presses it, projector comes on with video playing) NEWS REPORT

Jane: all these promises – you say you’ll create 25,000 jobs for Brits when it won’t, you say you won’t subsidise nuclear energy and then you pretty much do – can you not see how badly this is coming across to us? Ed: Technically, it’s not a subsidy

Jane: You sticking to your promises ‘technically’ isn’t good enough – in reality, you’re not acting in the public interest.

Ed: Energy costs are rising as it is, they’ve risen by 9% this year anyway. Whilst I am of course sympathetic to the needs of the public, energy which doesn’t come from fossil fuels will always appear uneconomical. This is just the cost of sourcing energy from greener and more sustainable sources.

Jane: Yes, but those costs don’t necessarily have to be as high as you’re letting them get. Maybe if you didn’t get paid nearly 3 x more than the average Briton, then you would take the average Briton’s point of view into account.

Ed: Can I just ask – where did you say you went to university? Jane: Warwick.

Ed: Enough said. I’m off to play golf. (Ed storms out) (Jane sits with audience)

Jane: He really couldn’t give a shit about us could he?

(Projector comes back on with END on. Lights come on, cast walk in and take a bow!)

The excerpt quoted here includes a number of interesting factors. Firstly, it presents an argument from the point of view of behind the closed doors of power and authority – the PMs office, a feature also indicated by the projector screen behind the character showing a closed, wood panelled room where different rhetorics are played out or silenced depending on what character is in the room with the PM, and by student actors making use of a side door in the classroom, emphasising waiting for the door to be fully shut before continuing after each stakeholder has been and gone. Furthermore, the script students produced includes a wealth of information on the topic, which is fully referenced in the hard copy and gathered largely from news reports and debates in major newspapers, as well as from scholarly articles, thus moving away from solely using academic materials set by a bibliography to consider critical issues. But perhaps the most notable moment, in that it diverges from previous and other performances, is the character Jane’s sudden revelation that she is a Warwick alumnus.

Here, the student audience has been momentarily projected into its future opportunities for participation. Still marginalised, as Jane is patronised for not being a graduate of Oxford in a contemporary landscape of Oxford graduates populating key roles in parliament, she is active nonetheless. When the character Jane suddenly breaks the hitherto sacrosanct fourth wall between audience and actors, she sits as ‘one of us’ again, commenting in the present on what is taking place in the imagined future, lamenting at her exclusion and turning her ‘I’ into a momentary ‘we’. ‘We’ audience members, students and staff members of Warwick are left with an empty political stage in front of us, and are told in no uncertain terms (and to my mind rather bravely as Business School examiners were present in the room) “He really couldn’t give a shit about us, could he?” I argue that one of the voices emerging here is that of a group of students critically assessing their own future ability to participate in the political and environmental climates of the world. The (fourth) wall between academy and ‘real world’, theory and practice, and the double-binds of not/being allowed to be critical in practice are arguably being tested. In sympathy perhaps with the words of Barad, “Cuts are not enacted from the outside, nor are they ever enacted once and for all” (Barad, 2007, p. 179)