Scars and Other Documented Evidence
This exhibition is meant to be a provocative and reflective interrogation of violence in schools (historical and contemporary) as read through objects/material culture. For example, just on corporal punishment we know that there are not only many different types of objects (eg the manufactured cane, hippo tails, ochre branches, the tamarind rod, the leather strap, wooden paddles), but the many autobiographical narratives that go with these objects. The exhibition will draw attention to the objects themselves (either through displays of the objects or through photographs of the objects), and will include narratives (through curatorial statements, video or audio recorded material, etc.). In the exhibition we will include excerpts from old textbooks used in teacher training that explain 'how to cane'. We could of course include texts of social change as well. A performance artist from Trinidad and Tobago, Christopher Crozier, has written about, exhibited and performed a piece around the tamarind rod as part of an exhibition called 'System of Organization' that we might include. A relief group in the Sudan is working with the idea of whistles instead of whips so that the whistle could be exhibited as an alternative. But there are other forms of violence in school that can also be represented materially. These would include gang-wear ( knives, leather bracelets, etc.). Sexual violence might be represented through the objects that stand for transactional sex, as well as other symbols from schools (the photographs that schoolchildren have taken of toilets, for example, in Swaziland), as well as through video clips from Unwanted Images. As for bullying, we might include examples of menacing notes, text messages and cyber bullying, as well as video clips from films such as the Never Ending Story. All of these forms of violence could be accompanied by aesthetically presented newspaper clippings (objects and of themselves), and children's drawings.

Claudia Mitchell