The study analyzes and extracts the ideas and proposals developed in Robert Filliou's book "TEACHING AND LEARNING AS PERFORMING ARTS" (1970) in regard to the pedagogical or educative potential of artistic practice, and relates them to the situations since the 1970ths (in Germany respectively in European and American culture) in which art and artists meet non-artists. In the fields of art mediation in museums and schools, in art exhibitions as well as in projects of artists with explicit pedagogical interests, the respective specific methods were to be examined and compared to the theoretical approaches of Filliou and the other artists participating in his book. The aim of this investigation was to find out to what extend the ideas at the time about the importance of art for the society have come true resp., were they considered. It was possible to prove that the significance of artistic practice for the production of new knowledge, as pointed up by Filliou, as well as the emphasis on the active role of the recipient of art works has been established during the past 50 years as it can be seen in the actual discussions on the relation of science and art, on the term "participation", the concept of "progressive education" and also the focussing on the "narratives" as sources of research. The ideal roles as defined by Filliou, of the factors autority, individuum, power, institution, knowledge, freedom, tradition and experiment, as well as their relation to each other in the processes of learning and teaching have been formed to a tool for analysis which helped to examine the actual theories and methods of art practice, art mediation and art pedagogy. It became clear that today's concepts of participation, substantiation of authority, production of knowledge, and specificly the part that art could take on in these, can profit by the consideration of Filliou's fundamental ideas, specially by the use of his definitions of authority and knowledge.
About the Author: Rajele Jain works independently as artist, researcher and film maker since 1993. Her main topics are interdisciplinary and inter-(trans-)cultural issues. For her documentary "The Nine Movements of the Eyelid" she has received the "Gisela-Bonn-Award" of the ICCR (Indian Council for Cultural Relations) in 2012. She obtained a fellowship of the Academy of Media Art Cologne (Germany) in 2001.