Over a number of meetings, the theorist, critic, video artist and occasional curator Mieke Bal (born 1946) engaged in a conversation on the art of teaching with the cultural analyst Jeroen Lutters. Looking for a dialogue that would also touch on the role of visual art, Lutters brought in paintings by Banksy, Rembrandt, Marlene Dumas and George Deem as teaching objects–one for each conversation. Lutters asked Bal what these paintings might have to say about teaching.

The result is this publication: a personal, meandering and precise account of Bal’s pedagogy. She reveals her way of thinking through visual art and literature and her ways of exchanging ideas. How do objects speak, and how can we use them? How do they teach us to find answers to important questions, just by looking, listening and reading within the relationship between student, teacher and teaching object?