Summary: Kathrin Busch- artistic research & poetics of knowledge
Busch, Kathrin. „Artistic Research and the Poetics of Knowledge“. Art & Research: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods 2, Nr. 2 (2009): 1–7.
The text discusses different artistic activities that are categorized under the term artistic research. The activities are not introduced at the level of concrete examples of artistic research but as options of conceptualizing the relationship between art, theory and science in a practice. They are presented and discussed in an evaluative manner. The text builds up from activities in art involving theory that are traditional, to some that are problematic, on to artistic research as a kind of super-reflective knowledge practice. K. Busch opposes a a “scientification of artistic research”. Inspired by post-structural critiques of discourse, science and the appeals of the “information society” (references to Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida), as well as by an expansion of institutional critique from the arts-institutions to the science-institutions (references to Andrea Fraser), it is claimed that artistic research should not be practiced as art based on science using admitted standards of scientifc method. In line with developments in science studies (crisis of representation) (as well as in line with again philosopher’s in the continental tradition such as Heidegger and Nietzsche) a sort of hybridization of art and science that does research in an intermediary zone of not yet conceptualized objects and that is open to the unexpected is proposed.
The categories are numbered from I-IX.
I art with research, i.e. that references science. For example surrealist painting references psychoanalysis.
II art about research. The symmetric double of science about art. Science is translated into art without admitted scientific methods being claimed for art. Here science and art are conceived as two disjoint kinds of knowledge. This artistic research might provide knowledge about e.g. the contingency and fictional quality of scientific knowledge or aspects of oppression and exclusion inherent in knowledge structures. [Maybe one has to imagine that art provides the “sensual” side of this knowledge? How does it differ from sociology of science or science studies which provides the “same”(?) knowledge?]
III art as research. Common in institutional-critique. Art as knowledge production (integrating admitted scientific methods (vs. II)) and not just integrating knowledge developed elsewhere (vs. I). “[…] scientific argumentation and artistic criterion are seamlessly intertwined, and artistic work does not claim to produce a “work” in the classic sense of the term, but rather (often critical) knowledge[…]” (p.3)
IV art as science. Art as an academic scientific discipline. Groups attempts to put art on a scientific basis, mainly enacted in art education programs in Arts Universities. Artists are supposed to base their practice on theoretical knowledge and develop it according to standards of scientific rigor. This is criticized for being based on an idealization of academia.
V art with recourse to theory that is also an art about science. Attributed to Fraser. It includes a reflection not only on art practice from theory, but also on theory and knowledge production itself. Here Busch suggests, by reference to Foucault, that this reflection questions a reductionism of all knowledge to scientific knowledge, leaving artistic knowledge open as an alternative. B. alludes to art’s ability to evoke other knowledge “because of diverse forms of presentation” (p.4)
VI art as a different form of knowledge. Art is able to refer to that which cannot be articulated within respected fields of knowledge. This is explained by reference to certain concepts of continental philosophy drawing a contrast between scientific knowledge and a “different” knowledge: “This different knowledge, one that questions the tight limitations of modern rationality by articulating – in contrast to objective, absolute, consistent scientific knowledge – knowledge that is equally ambivalent, incommensurable, and singular.” (p.4)
VII art or poetics of knowledge. Based on the thesis (from the philosophy of science) that representation of knowledge itself has a performative effectiveness (in constituting the objects of knowledge), artistic research’s occupation with representation (poetics) can be seen as manifesting the hidden conditions of knowledge production. Conventions of representations cross disciplines from science to literary texts and visual artworks, and are constituted in a given era by all of them together.
VIII hybridization of art and research. Artistic forms of knowledge that develop into hybrid forms of knowledge or intervene in theoretical discourses. It is in this sense a remedy to an abbreviated view of theoretical practice, and opposes a mere supplier function of theory. Here it is compared to Heidegger’s “thought” (vs. science “Science does not think”) and Derrida’s deconstruction which is occupied with guaranteeing openness (to the singular and incommensurable) in theory construction.
IX hybrid research in the indermediary zone. Thresholds between sciences and between art and science are presented as where the most urgent problems lie, where the objects of research are still under-determined. This is the sphere of “wild” knowledge that is still unstructured, non-conceptual, and the sphere of the unexpected.