Table of Contents

The essay

The author

The credits

Anne Marie Bastien

Assess to progress

* * *

In a conference on the teaching of the arts in the music school of Villefontaine (Isère), in 1996, Pierre Gillet considered assessment to be a necessity for the clearsighted development of any action and said of it: “It is the housekeeping role of every project, of every human action: it is the upsurge of rationality in our dreams”.

Such a mundane definition may seem quite distant from the poetic value usually credited to artistic practices. But it would mean underestimating poetry, or any other work of art, and reducing it to a vague emotional indulgence, mistakenly believing that it stems from an instinctive urge, a naive spontaneity and not from relentless work and oftentimes a highly demanding mind-set. As in the case of Raymond Roussel who said he “had bled” on every verse of his Nouvelles impressions d’Afrique.[1] Many artists have given evidence of both the torments as much as the pleasure with which they produced their works. An artistic endeavor may not necessarily be born out of suffering but it must be remembered that play – as it is the word used by those who dedicate themselves to music, theater or choreography – is not just amusement but also commitment and risk-taking. Play then enables the confrontation between reality and imagination, symbolization, transposition and experimentation of reality which will lead to the development of thought.

Assessing: a necessary act

Therefore, Pierre Gillet’s words appear perfectly relevant, on the condition that we all agree on what assessing is. Depending on the situation, it can conclude an action: tidy up, put back in order, it is over, there is a clean-up in order to move on to something else. That is the case of normative assessment, or certification: we check that every item of learning is correctly in place, and operating accordingly. This type of assessment is practiced in every field, including the arts, where there are exams, diplomas, professional courses. The aim is therefore to check that elements of knowledge and skills do indeed comply with the minimum requirements, with the level defined in principle by well-thought-out curricula, which will have set the goals of the training. In musical training for instance, technical skills will be assessed (faithfulness to a melody, rhythmic precision, accurate decoding of a score, coherent analysis of a work, etc.). Assessment also concerns skills that are harder to appreciate such as the quality of the performance, expressiveness, elements in which the subjectivity of the assessor, his own aesthetic preferences come under consideration and may be the subject of debate, or even dispute.

If we place a training course or a project outside the context of certification, we can consider assessment as a dynamic element which guides action and makes it progressive. Then the housekeeping role consists in cleaning up, pruning, setting up straight, reorganizing, decorating. Any type of action is analyzed all the way through and adjusted to remain in the best space between imagination and reality.

Before assessing an action, it had to be conceived – born in the imagination – then implemented – given reality. These first steps will have great influence on the type of assessment. It will occur in the in-between, become a measuring tool for gaps, and tension between the imagination (conceived, projected action) and reality (action effectively accomplished). It represents this space where this tension becomes productive, what Chinese philosophy names void-median[2] where opposites, fixed elements, are able to meet and produce movement, meaning, life.

On the resistance of the artistic matter

When we practice art, we do the following: we conceive, we express a desire (sing, write, draw, put an object or a body in space) and we try to shape matter, be it sound, verbal, plastic or corporeal, in order for it to take on the tangible form that we have imagined. On the other hand, we can take hold of the matter, grind it, knead it, up to the point where it makes an idea emerge, an idea that we would have been unable to formulate beforehand, an idea which nevertheless meets our expectations and the hope that intuitively inspired our research and our leaps in the dark. The practice of an art in this case is no longer really house-keeping, order is not necessary for it to happen. It does not worry about it. It goes to work, makes do with dregs and knows how to derive profit from those dregs: “The beautiful, the interesting may come out of accident”[3] One might say that art has very little to do with the idea of assessment. In all ages, there have been trends that rejected any form of assessment in the artistic field. They could be summed up in a trivial and sharp fashion by the adage: “There’s no accounting for taste”. Yet, it is very interesting to discuss taste. The interest in such debate is not to win our interlocutor over in order to achieve a consensus but to understand in what and why we are touched by an object of art, what resonance it has on our senses and thought.

There are some artistic practices (collective practices in particular) which resist the idea of assessment in the way that they work. If singing in a choir is mandatory to obtain a diploma, how can we assess on an individual basis the quality of a person’s practice? We can assess the quality of the choir, but how much of a contribution does each individual bring to it? There are cases where only diligence was eventually retained as the one objective criterion.

Beyond its formal aspect, it is probably the very function of art which forms an obstacle to its assessment, since it questions the conventional norms of a society and of a culture. Art interacts with its environment by bringing an original point of view that dares to shake established values, to highlight their relativity, and to question their legitimacy. Going back to the example of the choir, a voice with a rough tone will be coarse and unable to blend with the sound of the group. But in other activities of research into sound, – improvisation, – it will bring original and interesting propositions which can be exploited by the group. Problematic though it may be in the context of a normal situation, that voice can become a dynamic and productive asset in a new context where the norm no longer has the same force.

Despite this resistance, artists are uncompromising regarding their own productions. They may very well do some housekeeping: they sort, they classify, they clean up, they throw away. How many crossed-out pages, repainted-over oils, erased sound or video recordings are there, before their creators are (temporarily) satisfied with their production? But judgement is above all else passed, based on an inner demand rather than on an external norm.

Artistic experience and assessment share a part of relativity and subjectivity. Not everything can be analyzed in a rational way. One should be able to reject the idea of assessing everything.

Assessing the practice of the arts, is it reasonable?

Any individual confronted with the practice of the arts – who has, to the slightest degree, curiosity and an open mind – as a performer or a spectator/listener makes the move to engage in a progressive process. In his personal journey, he will accumulate experiences, references, knowledge, skills which will lead him to modify or to refine his point of view, his reactions, his choices. That process can be assessed.

To assess is to agree implicitly to define, explicitly and in a given context, goals and the path to these goals. Both goals and path will be subjected to analysis, judgments and a clear-sighted observation, that can sometimes be destabilizing if it contradicts intuitions or presupposed ideas. In terms of art, there is play (means) and there are stakes (goals), and we can sum this statement up in broad terms by postulating two ambitions: to develop thought (to create) and to pass on a culture (to perform).

Developing thought is based on building structure, mastering codes, gestures, techniques that are reassuring beacons, nurturing the freeing-up of mind and body, bringing about the possibility of venturing into personal expression. This also happens when we experiment with the connections between reality and imagination (as mentioned above) and when the material that we seek to mold collides with the meaning that we seek to express, bearing in mind our framework (stands, mounts, place, duration, etc.) and those constraints that our framework imposes.

Through the transmission of a culture, it is the discovery of otherness, the exposure to other thoughts that are at play. It is the experience of opening one’s mind and finding how resourceful it can be. There is sharing, recognition, learning to respect what is other, without necessarily concurring: I can be deeply affected by an artistic object that will leave my neighbor indifferent, and that will diminish neither the value of the emotion I feel, nor the object, nor my neighbor.

Along the path of encountering otherness, constructing thought, mastering gesture and matter, we can figure out that we have made progress.

Ubi, quo, unde, qua?

In their learning of grammar, Latin scholars regurgitate these particles that define place: where am I, whither go I, whence do I come, which way do I take? To assess the journey, both in terms of quantity and quality, all these questions matter.

To project a route, first it is important to locate the starting point. Our geographical, social and family environment gives us a culture that will facilitate our work – or not. If we come from a background where certain codes have been integrated, we will find it easier to progress in an environment now familiar. On the other hand, it may be that such an acquired system of references may have blighted some of our capacity to acknowledge originality when it occurs outside of this system. Knowing where we are from and imagining whither we shall go, we can plan our itinerary. But there are many possible paths, forks in the road that we can take to bypass obstacles or merely in order to see. If we do not travel alone, but as part of a group, because we are necessarily bound to meet other people, things become much more complicated. Thankfully, the pieces of the puzzle are often malleable enough to be assembled effortlessly, relying on complementarity rather than oppositions. And a pinch of assessment and self-assessment lets us catch a glimpse of where we are, the progress that we have made.

But how?

Can we simultaneously do something and watch ourselves do it? Maybe one simply needs to take breaks on the side of the road to review the situation. It may not be necessary to take out maps, sextants or a Sat-Nav. Talking to fellow travelers and the ones moving in the vicinity is often what sheds the most light. And some well-known questions remain a good guide: what did I expect and what did I find or what haven’t I found yet? What was I not expecting and nevertheless found, which maybe will prompt me to look for something else?

We know that there are many assessment “grids”. No doubt these are sometimes useful. But the very word “grid” warns us about limits that have been defined. They give us indicators that need to be interpreted in the context in which they are to be applied. We will above all remember that “when you cannot take the right lane, there is always the left lane”[4]. And carry on down that road, come what may.

Translation: Paul Warusfel

1__ Librairie Alphonse Lemerre, Paris, 1932

2__ Cf. in particular: François Cheng, Le Dialogue, une passion pour la langue française, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 2002

3__ Couleurs vagabondes, La Ferme du Vinatier, Bron, 2005

4__ Couleurs vagabondes, La Ferme du Vinatier, Bron, 2005

/…

The author

Coming from a literary background, Anne Marie Bastien has always been interested in music, especially music being created around her, keeping an eye on the productions from plastic, visual and performing arts.

The twists and turns of her professional life, started both in the fields of education and culture, led her to the CFMI (training center for musicians in school), where she took on administrative and institutional duties. This center also provided her with a framework in which she could develop projects in line with her convictions and artistic taste, especially in the publishing field or in the development of the access to artistic practices for ill or disabled people.

Involved in community work, she is the president of Résonnance Contemporaine, treasurer for ARFI, secretary of Momeludies and an active member in several board of directors and more informal groups.

Assess to progress
Anne Marie Bastien

Éclair #3

Collection of the Centre de Formation de Musiciens Intervenant à l’école de l’Université Lumière Lyon 2, CFMI de Lyon

Resources center in artistic and cultural education cfmi@univ-lyon2.fr – www.cfmi-lyon.fr

ISBN: 978-2-490238-05-7

ISSN: 2270-7263

Free

Editorial organization:

Anne Marie Bastien and Amandine Monnet

Translation: Paul Warusfel

Graphic design: Pascale Péronnet, ij design

Digital edition: Jiminy Panoz

© CFMI, Lyon, 2017

© CFMI, Lyon, 2013 for the original draft in French

Copyrights reserved in all countries

Legal submission 4th trimester 2013 for the original draft in French

Circulation

Paper version: cfmi@univ-lyon2.fr

Digital version: https://edition-cfmi.univ-lyon2.fr

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