Educational dream-grief

I've been reading Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven, 1971, and speaking with friends, artists, a curator. Over the past few years we developed a healthy respect for our respective perspectives and experiences, working together with students to find adequate ways of thinking about making, showing and writing about art.

She eyed him with curiosity. He stood and endured reality. He's telling me how he has just been shafted by the institution - another in the steady curve of decisions that are dragging the fine art course we've been involved with further and further from the difficult inspirational thing we worked so hard to build up ...

'I like things,' she said.

He nodded.

'You're a real artist. It's beautiful.'

'Mr Orr is expert with tangibles', the proprietor put in, toneless, speaking from the left elbow.

We agree that there is a reign of mediocrity and profound managerial ignorance of visual art, shored up by the bureaucratisation of art education. 'Listen, I remember', Heather said suddenly. 'Of course, it was before The Break, that's why it's all mixed up in my mind. You dreamed, I mean, you thought you dreamed things that came true. Didn't you? And the doctor was making you do more and more of it, and you didn't want him to, and you were looking for a way to get out of Voluntary Therapy with him without getting clobbered with Obligatory.'

Her hours were spread so thinly across the week for the same pay that it stopped being viable.

'See, I do remember it.'

As a more experienced practitioner, another friend was replaced by a younger colleague when the institution found it legally impossible to avoid issuing a contract.

'See, I do remember it.'

Under the guise of cuts and budgetry restraints ... clients facilitated ... a new phase ... corporate smiles all round.

'No. Outgrew 'em,' Orr said, and laughed. She also laughed.

'What did you do about the dreams?'

'Oh... went on dreaming.'

'I thought you could change the world. Is this the best you could do for us - this mess?'

'It'll have to do,' he said.

He would have preferred less of a mess himself, but it wasn't up to him.

And at least it had her in it.

He lost his post without receiving any notification. The new timetable was drawn up and he wasn't on it.

... she glanced over at the Alien.

'I'll be back in ten minutes,' Orr said to his employer as he went for his raincoat.

'Take evening,' the Alien said.

One by one, we jumped or got pushed.

'Thank you very much', Orr said, and shook hands with his boss.

The big green flipper was cool in his human hand.

Recently I found myself agreeing to give feedback to a couple of young artists, outside any formal educational structure. Hmmm, not my usual thing, but I find myself unable to suggest they sign up for something I have, at least for now, lost faith in. There are others involved - an artist, curator, critic. I am hopeful that the language we find will help us think and see more clearly if we're careful and unbounded.

He went with Heather into the warm, rainy afternoon of summer. The Alien watched them from within the glass-fronted shop, as a sea creature might watch from an aquarium, seeing them pass and disappear into the mist.

All quotes from Ursula Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven, Panther Science Fiction, London, 1971.

Jaki Irvine is an artist currently living and working in Dublin. She has taught at Goldsmiths, Central St Martins and Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dublin.

This extract was reproduced in Art Monthly's special issue on art education, October 2008/ Issue 320, p8-9.