RE: ASSEMBLY: Notes on a long-term school-based art project

In 2009 the sound art collective Ultra-red initiated RE: ASSEMBLY, a long-term collaboration with students and teachers in a high school in the City of Westminster, London. During extended residencies over four years, Ultra-red facilitated an inquiry into the impact on the school of migration and immigration policy in the UK and the country’s changing conceptions of citizenship, specifically the distinction between ‘social citizenship’ and ‘state citizenship.’ Ultra-red were active in the school and helped develop large-scale cross-curricula interdisciplinary interventions. Additional inquiries into the political economy of key neighbourhoods in London involved small groups of students. RE: ASSEMBLY was commissioned as part of the Serpentine Gallery’s ‘Edgware Road Project’ and was housed in its off-site Centre for Possible Studies. The processes and outcomes of the project are discussed in relation to both the pedagogical turn in art and the emerging genre of social practice, including the tensions between disciplinary-based curricula, individualized and technique-based art education, and collaborative investigations rooted in historically and politically specific contexts.