A Fantastic Decomposition

Abstract

This article draws on data from a single element of a larger project, which focused on the issue of “ how children develop a reputation as ‘naughty’ in the early years classroom.”1 The author draws attention to the (in)corporeal (re)formation of the line in school, undertaking a decomposition of the topological spaces of research/art/education. She attempts to decompose schoolchild iconography into the line as a product and subject of art practices, where it denotes space, gestures of containment, impulses to represent and make visible what might otherwise remain invisible. This experience of a methodological decomposition, (un)folding of the line in education into the line curated in the world of art, led the author to realize how the child could become not one idea and one image but many ideas folded into many images where the rituals and routines associated with the making of lines in school can be reconceptualized.