Conversations about Art: A Disruptive Model of Interpretation.

This paper describes a disruptive model of interpretation which explores positions in discursive practices embedded in visual culture as a means of understanding self and difference. The model understands interpretation as a Foucauldian technique of the self, and its use may give art teachers and students strategies for understanding the social construction of interpretation, self, and difference through discursive positions. The model developed from a deconstruction of the responses from Grade 11 visual arts classes in two high schools in New South Wales, Australia, and emerged from text deconstruction as a tying together of modernist practices of interpretation with a postmodern understanding of the construction of interpretation and/with self. The basis for this disruptive model is found in the dilemma of authoritative (modern) interpretation and multiple voices (postmodern) interpretation. The first part of the model establishes an authoritative interpretation from sources such as artists, critics, historians, and teachers, and an examination of the discursive practices of the interpretation forms the next part of the model. (BT)