The Student Body—Gabo Camnitzer
Gabo Camnitzer’s The Student Body is an extension of his installation Lots of Dots in after school.
Lots of Dots is the name of a carpet designed by the US company Joy Carpets & Co.—a bestselling educational accessory. In Lots of Dots, a 40-minute multicolored lighting sequence—the standard length of a class period in the New York City public school system—is positioned above the tufted grid, changing the carpet’s appearance.
The video and accompanying booklet are comprised of original and found materials, as well as historical curricula, accounts of early modernism, representations of classrooms from popular culture, and archival footage of educational and psychological research conducted on children.
The Student Body and Lots of Dots ask us to recognize the ways in which formal abstraction (circles and squares) are primary tools for behavioral control and to reimagine these colors and shapes as invitations to move and play.
Related Exhibition
after school begins with the first bell. It brings together architects, artists, and educators to study the state and stakes of public education. Through spatial propositions, installations, alternative playgrounds, and curricular proposals, the participants consider architectural, pedagogical, and representational structures that shape how knowledge is created, shared, taught, or withheld.