Conference Agenda

The starting point of this contribution is Jean Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's short film En rachâchant based on the children's story Ah! Ernesto by Marguerite Duras. The film takes a humorous look at the hierarchization of the educational process through the character of Ernesto, who flatly refuses to go to school because he learns there things he does not know. This film is also the center around which Ola Vasiljeva's solo exhibition was formed at Vleeshal in Brussels in 2015. In the exhibition, the film is staged as a "playful attack on a current market logic that dominates all fields of education and dictates that knowledge must be economically rentable"(Vasiljeva 2015). A refusal to learn is associated with the idea of unlearning and a critique of reason and sense in favour of nonsense, fragmentation and forgetfulness. The exhibition 'occupies an anti-educational stage populated by mixed-media works, sculptures and drawings that manipulate motifs related to the subject of disobedience as learning'(ibid).
With this contribution, I want to reflect on this exhibition, and more specifically on contemporary experimental platforms that, under the umbrella of contemporary art and radical pedagogies, seek to offer an alternative response to an 'intellectual bankruptcy and spiritual emptiness of the approved educational institution' (Ibid.). I want to connect with this by distinguishing between a child-centered pedagogy and a thing-centered pedagogy. Instead of seeing Ernesto's refusal to learn what he does not know as a plea to put the child's world at the center, and seeing knowledge acquisition and the school as forms that stand in the way of thinking differently, -a reading that seems obvious at first glance-, I want to indicate that what Ernesto points at is not so much a critique of learning in school as it is a request to radically rethink how we have inherited a one-sided, incomplete concept of it. In this way, I want to use the film to consider how the notion of ‘unlearning’ gives birth to the art of noticing and paying attention.

Stress and performance gained increasing scholarly attention in the context of performing arts, and a significant relationship was found between stress and artistic and academic achievements (Wilson, 2002). Occupational demands – organizational, interpersonal, and intrapersonal, are extremely high among performing artists and impact their well-being and achievements (Willis et al., 2019), while interpersonal demands – complex relationships with peers, colleagues, audiences, and management, are related to maladaptive perfectionism and performance anxiety (ibid.). Stress can negatively impact, not only well-being but cognitive and motor skills (Beilock & Carr, 2001), highly relevant with performing artists, often experience stage fright, which can negatively affect the physical and emotional components of performance (Steptoe et al., 1995).

Performing arts is a physically and mentally demanding discipline, with stressors ranging from competition pressure to heavy rehearsals to the fear of injury (Bartel & Thomson, 2021; Kenny, 2011; Vervainioti & Alexopoulos, 2015). Performing artists portray a wide range of potentially overwhelming emotions, that might also contribute to heightened stress (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). Moreover, due to the public nature of performance settings, performing artists are vulnerable to external criticism, and a perceived lack of effort recognition can be related to lower satisfaction (Smith, 1989).

For performing arts students, the demands of rehearsals, performances, and academic deadlines can create a complex environment where stressors add up negatively affecting academic performance (Kenny, 2011) and mental health (Clegg & Clements, 2022; Kausar & Ahmad, 2021). The pressure to excel in both artistic and academic domains contributes to heightened stress levels, potentially impacting subjective well-being and cognitive processes essential for academic success.

However, stress and well-being are not the sole impactors on academic and artistic achievements, and studies pointed to other factors like self-efficacy, grit, and help-seeking orientation (Harpaz et al., 2023), often explored separately and among non-artistic population. The present study extends Harpaz et al.'s model in two respects: (1) theoretically, by adding the concept of perceived stress to the model and, (2) by expanding the generalizability via sampling Hungarian non and performing arts students, exploring both possible cross-cultural differences (original study sampled North American students), and the effect of academic discipline. The current model aims to predict grit and subjective academic success by perceived stress, coping resources, and self‐cultivation characteristics (e.g. self-efficacy, subjective well-being, help-seeking orientation, personal growth, and savoring art).

The main research questions are:

1. Are there any differences between non and preforming art students in predicting subjective academic success by stress, coping resources, and self‐cultivation characteristics?
2. What is the added effect of stress on the model predicting grit and academic success?
3. Are there any cultural differences in the relationships between the model variables among the Hungarian student population (current study) and the previous study’s North American sample (Harpaz et al., 2023)?

The streaming era has introduced more than a plentitude of new cultural content-filled platforms. It introduced new ways of searching, listening, and sharing (Tepper & Hargittai, 2009), and new ways of shaping culture, identity, connections, and socialization while overcoming traditional fostering environments like parental education, peer groups, and communities (Bourdieu, 1996). While music is still highly social and can invigorate gatherings with friends and family, personal consumption has become increasingly dependent on algorithms as shapers of taste (Hesmondhalgh, 2022). In fact, competition between music platforms has shifted from content and affordability to capturing the user by focusing on their emotional needs and preferences to retain their use (Hracs & Webster, 2021). However, media-based socialization occurs, not amid consumption, but rather through online communication and exchange of content (Steigler, 2018), making sharing and taste-influencing an important part of current socialization (Vaizman, 2022).

Also affected by the streaming era, amateur musicianship became entangled with informal distant learning, which was further affected by COVID-19 social distancing. Distance has been bridged by online learning options, including communities of learning experiences and performance (Cayari, 2014, 2015; Waldron 2011, 2013). However, the abundance of “do-it-yourself” options has encouraged social detachment, dependent help-seeking opportunities, and teacher-student relationships neglections – all affecting learning abilities and possibly augmented during COVID-19 (Harpaz & Vaizman, 2023).

Socialization is at the core of learning, especially through engagement with art, via the creation of communities, and by close educational circles from family to educators (Bourdieu, 1996). Music platforms’ algorithms, as well as movie/TV ones, have affected the human influential role on the entertainment and art consumer (Vaizman, 2023). To further assess the effects of the streaming era on socialization, this study focuses on musical relationships – taste fostering as expressed by music mentoring preferences of consumers, and music consumption habits. The relations between those were explored while considering two personal characteristics – open-mindedness and savoring art.

Open-mindedness refers to a person’s mental openness to experience new things, as opposed to being involved in social actions (Soto & John, 2017). Savoring art is how Lee et al. (2021) describe a person’s tendency to appreciate art, to need it, as opposed to consuming or attending artistic events. Introduced during the pandemic, it is well suited for exploring the need for art in times of social distance (characterizing the streaming era) and the need for self-cultivation (Harpaz et al., 2023).

To the best of our knowledge, the relationship between open-mindedness and savoring art and music consumption preferences has not yet been tested. In the present study, we chose to focus on music mentoring preferences (MMP) and music consumption habits (MCH(.

MMP refers to music consumers’ tendency to rely on human vs. algorithmic music mentors, as recommenders of new content, whether passively or actively (Vaizman, 2023). MCH refers to routine conduct around music: private listening, social listening, discussing music, and attending musical events. Based on the literature suggesting that artists are open to experience (Schultz, 2022), and that music students have the tendency to prefer a network of music mentors, while non-music students rely more on algorithmic mentorship (Vaizman, 2023), hypotheses were formed under two dimensions: (1) correlations between music consumption and psychological characteristics, and (2) differences between amateur musicians and non-musicians regarding the tested variables.

1) A positive correlation exists between both open-mindedness and savoring art, and MCH.

2) A positive correlation exists between both open-mindedness and savoring art, and MMP, excluding Algorithmic Passive preference.

3) Amateur musicians would score higher than non-musicians on both open-mindedness and savoring art.

4) Amateur musicians would score higher than non-musicians on MCH and MMP.