The Orbis Pictus we all live in: Coding the World with differently-abled visitors in the Gallery of Contemporary Art
Abstract
This discussion paper is based on research findings from a programme of gallery education for visitors with special needs. Contemporary fine art is self-reflective, critical, participatory, often revealing hidden structures of signifying systems.
We, as art educators and cultural researchers, are convinced about its great cognitive potentials and its power in psychic-socio construction. Living in the symbolic order of today's society and participating in processes of communication requires multiple competencies and literacies.
Production of globalised cultural industry and the manner of their dissemination by film, photography, TV, and the internet create a specific cultural interface that blurs distinctions between the "natural" and the "artificial". Do we still live in Comenius' visible world-in-pictures or rather in the image-world? Social systems are under constant flux in general, including education.
A serious stagnation in the educational approach towards students with special needs and their neglect still persist in the Czech society.