Jacques Derrida, on awakening from a dream, observed that the fear of writing was both a reflection on criticisms already written and criticisms to come, in the same way democracy, for him, is always to come. The way culture has been slowed, curtailed or partly destroyed by this uninvited and unexpected global pandemic, has brought things to the surface that may have been otherwise left to rest. Until now, until this big interruption, particular acts of criticism would not have surfaced due to the nature of life and work becoming seasonal, routine or numbed by the all too comfortable and familiar institutional blanket you will never acknowledge or accept has become your fulfilment and fate.

Among notes handed out to his creative writing class, writer and so-called “grammar nazi” David Foster Wallace, shared one particularly idiosyncratic note that outlined the nuanced difference between the word “further” and “farther” (up until Wallace I never got the difference). “Further”, for Wallace, signified time, whereas “farther” signified space. This guiding principle was given local significance almost a year ago when “Further Education” made the headlines after the calculated Leaving Cert results went a little awry. Propped upon a news media couch the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Simon Harris, was quick to use the stopgap option of Further Education for those students who feared being left without a college place. If we agree with Wallace that “Further” denotes the temporal not the spatial, and that being an artist is a commitment to the long game rather than the careerist pursuit of institutional space, then you might begin to see the seed of my argument.

I am a product of Further Education. I repeated my Leaving Cert at Pearse College of Further Education, Crumlin. When the notion of art school first skirted the horizon I attended Sallynoggin College of Further Education which led to securing a third-level place at Dun Laoghaire (IADT). These first, slow steps through Further Education, towards a life in art, was fundamental to how I progressed in third-level and beyond. Further Education gave me the grounding experience for what I have come to know as “the long game” of art. And this long game has nothing to do with academic plaudits; being in art school was my chance to be around like-minded people for as long as possible before making my way alone in the world as an artist. (It’s funny how recent art graduates declare in their bios that they achieved distinction in their studies as if that matters to the long game – Hands Up! I did!)

Four years ago, following a HDip with a focus on Further Education, I started teaching at Gorey School of Art (GSA). A small permanent staff of four, supported by a couple of part-timers, GSA was where I wanted to teach after being accepted for a period of teaching practice there, and where I fortunately continue to teach today. This pathway to teaching in Further Education was influenced by, first, a lack of opportunities at third-level; second, living beyond commutable distance from Dublin; and third, administrational experiences I had as a class representative during my BA and MFA at IADT and the National College of Art & Design (NCAD) respectively. Simply put, the behind-the-scenes third-level administrational landscape, as I experienced it, although only a snapshot supplemented by off-the-record critical conversations with lecturers I had grown close to, was beset by a self-serving politics that was all about keeping one's job, medium-specific territory, or climbing the ranks of the broader administration. Understandable, and dumb to think an art school would be any different from any other institution is your logical response. An institution is an institution after all. I disagreed – at the time. I believed that art institutions might work differently to other institutions. Even though, as Noam Chomsky always begins his counterargument to the dumbfounded and soon-to-be-glazed-over receiver, history tells the real story.

As a class rep in two third-level art institutions it was curious to witness teaching staff around a board table with the same body language and ventriloquism of the political class. Don’t ask me why I ended up as a class rep. Perhaps I understood early on that rubbing shoulders with the faculty would be important somehow. Further, I was young and dumb and idealistic, but still… I began to see artists differently around those managerial board tables; they wore different hats and faces. They became those. Those in charge were demonised, and in retaliation to this latent demonisation, acted in kind. Worst of all, there was staff that saw nothing wrong with the hierarchical status quo, and in some cases were cheerleaders for the institution, putting their not-so-secret agenda second to the institution so they could come first later on. Of course this story of being institutionalised is an old and familiar story and drug; familiarity and safety the drug of choice for those who become fully institutionalised, not being able to squeeze out of the institutional vice. And yet we are all institutionalised, while temping as freelance; doing the job so we don’t have to do the job. Further, in the under-resourced and under-appreciated sector of art, the opportunities are low, the competition high, the stakes highest.

So Further Education was where I placed my pedagogical hat. Soon enough the politics that was very much part of the snapshot negative of third-level education I carried around in my pocket was perfectly exposed. I discovered that Further Education is irrevocably tethered to higher education, being partly a feeder school in the preparation of portfolios for entrance into third-level. We were partly dependent on each other: third-level supplied the goal, and we supplied the prospective students and the methods for reaching that goal. Everyone was relatively happy with this institutional interdependence. But things change, especially when it comes to the fluctuating trends in “fine art” education vis-a-vis the fluctuating trends of the economy.

Art is always having to prove itself in the institutional setting, whether that is foot-traffic in the publicly funded art institution, or certified progression from one course to the next towards industry. This has led art education to being either fast-tracked through third-level or the development of an over-worked syllabus at second-level. For instance, in an effort to improve the Leaving Cert Art syllabus – albeit transformed from the fugitive subject it was in my day – the subject has become burdened by an over-ambitious workload. I have been informed by teachers in the sector that there are easier subjects for students to accrue points, subjects that take up much less time and effort. (Last year's virtual Leaving Cert results brought up my personal experience of almost failing Leaving Cert Art with a D- after achieving A's in the classroom.)

Some unfortunate decisions were made in recent years in terms of third-level art education, one being the three-year degree. This was the oddest truncation; the biggest lie. What I found after graduating from art school both times was the fear of "What fucking next!?" I even went back in the door of the institution to talk PhDs but only got as far as the interview, thank fuck. The most recent shortcut proffered to would-be artists is the “drawing day”, rolled out by some third-level art institutions, offering prospective students a fast-track entrance. This is an aggressive and short-sighted move. I get it: no students, no school. I work in an institution that worries about student numbers year on year as the student demographic changes, fast and distracted.

Aside from the pragmatic reasons and decisions for changing the small game as the big game changes, what can be done that does not place institutional self-preservation before everything else? What can be done to address the shortfall in students applying to, in particular fine art courses, and the ways in which an ever-changing culture is looking over the stooped shoulders of fine art as a career pathway to be an artist? What can be done that is more symbiotic and communitarian in our shared need and passion for keeping art in the hearts and minds of a new generation, instead of the me vs them mentality that has always segregated and hindered a more collective approach to art education?

I believe that good secondary and Further Education institutions play a significant role in the matrix and chain of art education. Further Education is a place where, on the one hand, you find mature students who have been derailed in life or work, or have casually retired from a work-life that stalled a latent or active drive to make art and are in no hurry, exploring the possibilities that a given medium may offer them; and on the other hand younger students who don’t know what they want but know they are in the right place for them, among people who think and see differently. Without a love and awareness of art fostered early on in the secondary school classroom, and the ease of transition that Further Education facilities those students (and parents) unsure of what art can offer them (and their children); or those students returning to art after life and responsibility got in the way of fulfilling that desire or dream, third-level art institutions will no longer be able to sustain fine art study under a regime of desperate thus compromised ‘recruitment’.

You cannot stop institutions from lying to you or themselves – being institutionalised is a delusional entanglement. Institutions are going to keep peddling their bullshit, with their mission statements and ethos and heeled toilet-paper in tow. All you can be certain of is, being an artist involves work and time, and is only progressive in the privacy of your studio, garage, kitchen, bedroom and your own head if you trust the electrical impulses from those fucked-up neurons you have. You get by as an artist, you don’t get anything. Where did you get the notion that art owes you something? Art owes you nothing!

Some 50 years ago in Paris France, in the educational context of philosophy – a vocation close to fine art – Derrida wrote a critical article for the French newspaper Le Monde, advancing and arguing against the new measures taken by the new government, especially in secondary schools, where the hours of teaching philosophy had been reduced massively to three hours, writing “the philosophical capacity of a child can be very powerful”. The would-be artists of the future should not be recruited, convinced or even strong-armed into art education. It's a long game not a short one, and most of it spent alone. And this long game begins in art education without a fast lane♠️

IMAGES: On Kawara; Frances Stark.