Dear nettimers,
For a few years I’ve been teaching and coaching at the ArtScience Interfaculty
in The Hague, a very nice small scale experimental program located between the
academy of visual arts and the school of music, with some modest links to local
universities, and since one and half years as part of their faculty. It struck
me in this time that there are many different understanding of what this
emerging field of ArtScience might be, tons of expectations but very little in
terms of a more precise articulation of what defines and demarcates the field.
To stimulate debate on this matter internally I wrote a short essay / position
paper called “Locating ArtScience’. The second draft of that essay is appended
below as this could be of interest here I think, given previous discussions
about the Earth Sciences, why some of us did not want to ‘March for Science’
and more..
I understand that some of this is susceptible to various forms of criticism and
contention (maybe all of it?) - that’s fine and part of the debate. Aso, it is
important to note that this is my personal take on what I still see as a field
‘in becoming’ (despite having some extended lineages), and one that I see
mostly in danger of overheating as a result of which some particularly valuable
potentialities might be lost or obscured. Most of all I have become more aware
of the great potential for methodological innovation that could and sometimes
already does emerge out of this hybrid set of practices, but it needs to be
shaped / refined / re-articulated - probably an endless process.
I appreciate any comments / criticism this might evoke - hope this is of
interest to some of you.
all bests,
Eric
—————————
Locating ArtScience
Eric Kluitenberg, Second draft, December 2017
ArtScience as an emergent field of practice
We should start from the premise that ArtScience at the moment is a field of
practice in becoming. There is enormous interest in this renewed convergence of
Art and Science around the globe, with new institutions founded, public
initiatives functioning increasingly professionally, a plethora of projects,
events, and a considerable number of publications. The picture is thus one not
of crisis or stagnation, but rather a booming field that if anything might be
in danger of overheating.
At the same time there does not as yet seem to be anything of a consensus about
what exactly defines this field, what its specificity might be, and where its
boundaries, its demarcations lie. This is the first and most serious problem
that ArtScience has run into, and one that needs to be urgently addressed to
avoid a melt-down of its inner core.
The problem can be summarised as follows: ArtScience as a field of emergent
practice is simultaneously oversignified and underdefined.
This rather curious condition invites a surplus of speculation and
unfulfillable expectations, which once these expectations have been revealed as
unfulfillable might generate an equally exponential loss of interest in the
field. However, something truly valuable might be lost if such an implosion of
interest, and subsequent de-investment from the field (in people, institutions,
activity, knowledge production, financial flows) were to happen.
To pre-empt this scenario of overheating and subsequently deflating and
collapsing the field, it is useful to identify some of the most defining
characteristics of this emerging field, and figure out what might be important
and valuable about them.
This short essay stops short of providing a comprehensive definition of the
field, nor does it provide a ‘complete’ mapping of a field that is currently
and perhaps by definition in an emergent state. Rather it tries to identify
some key characteristics as well as some key-misunderstandings, to question
what might be the special significance of ArtScience, and what could be
particularly important and valuable about it.
ArtScience: not an ‘interdisciplinary’ but ‘intersectional field of practice
The first important distinction to make is that ArtScience is not an
interdisciplinary, or cross-disciplinary field of practice. The seemingly
endless series of ‘collaborations of Art and Science’ type of events miss the
most crucial point of this emerging field: We should understand ArtScience as
an intersectional field that intersects a range of different established
disciplines and domains, but ultimately establishes a new practice building on
and moving beyond these established disciplines and domains.
The problem with the notion ‘interdisciplinary’ or ‘cross-disciplinary’ is that
it leaves the existing disciplines in tact. So, in this image, on one side we
find the Arts, on the other side the Sciences, both understood in the broadest
sense. Then some project is defined where representatives from both sides
collaborate and produce joint results, which can be more, or less, fruitful.
Regardless the outcome though, both domains are left entirely unchanged, and
with that their specific methodological approaches. The tacit assumptions about
each respective practice are left unchallenged, after which the participants
can safely return to their native professional domain.
ArtScience should instead be conceptualised more ambitiously as a new hybrid
practice with its own specific methodological concerns. Operating in a field
that it considers its own and that is distinctive from both that of the Arts
and that of the Sciences, but nonetheless building on experience gained in
those domains. Consequently, ArtScience should not be subsumed to either of
these domains. In other words, ArtScience is neither Art nor Science in any
conventional understanding of these terms. It articulates a field of enquiry of
its own - one that can be extremely broad and diversified, yet will also be
demarcated by clear boundaries that have so far not been clearly defined.
Methodological distinctions / concerns
The Arts at Cern program [1], which promotes the dialogue between artists and
particle physics, offers a useful methodological starting point for
articulating more precisely where ArtScience should locate itself. The
rationale for bringing art and fundamental research in particle physics
together in the frame of the largest and most costly scientific experiment in
operation on the planet today is that the initiators view art as a form of
fundamental research. In that sense they understand art and particle physics to
share an affinity with the pursuit of knowledge and insight primarily for its
own sake, and without an a-priori conception about the application of the
knowledge and insights that result from the experiment.
One might rightfully question in how far a scientific experiment at the scale
of the CERN programs in particle physics can ever be entirely free from
expectations and pressures for (long-term) applicability of results from the
experiments. Equally one might argue about the peculiar mechanisms of
contemporary art practice, its inherent reliance on reputation economy and the
institutional arrangements that facilitate this system. Still, in both cases
the objective of the activity is not to produce immediate outcomes that can be
applied in the short-term for exterior and extrinsic purposes. In this regard
they do share an affinity with ‘fundamental research’.
In the broadest sense then we can understand scientific activity as the
production of new forms of knowledge (rather than providing solutions for
specific problems, which is the typical concern of design and engineering). The
same might be said to hold true for the arts. However, here we would add not
just the production of new forms of knowledge, but also the generation of new
forms of experience that do not require ‘scientific validity’ to be accepted as
valuable contributions to the field. Here the arts can draw upon scientific
insights and enquiry, while the sciences can provide ‘scientific’ validation of
insights gained from artistic experiments. There is no principal contradiction
between these activities. Whether it makes sense to combine methods and
insights from both fields is a situational question, not a matter of principle.
When speaking about ‘the sciences’ in the context of ArtScience this should
refer to all the different scientific and academic disciplines, including the
social sciences, philosophy, mathematics, the humanities, the life-sciences and
the earth-sciences. There is a strange tendency to understand ‘the sciences’
too narrowly as referring exclusively to the natural sciences. To assume such
an a-priori within the field of ArtScience would severely diminish its
potential significance, unnecessarily so. ArtScience inherits from the arts the
freedom to appropriate any form, any medium, any methodology, any insight, from
any domain and any professional field. The specificity of the ArtScience
undertaking results from the specific enquiries its proponents wish to pursue
and the specific ArtScientific methodologies they develop in doing so.
Science, Art, and Design in the Anthropocene
Art and Science, and for that matter any other human activity, do not operate
in a neutral context at the moment. The collective efforts of all human
activity combined have reached a level, because of the explosive growth of the
global population, where these activities now constitute a physical force of
geological dimensions in their own right. No longer is it ‘nature’ that bounds
and qualifies human activity, but it is human intervention that now bounds and
qualifies natural processes and bends them to our will. In short human activity
has become a ‘natural force’ in its own right. This is a dramatic reversal of
roles.
Geologists speak of a new geological time period, The Era of Man, where humans
collectively move more rocks and sediments than any other force in ‘nature’.
This new geological era is named the Anthropocene [2]. The term has become
somewhat fashionable in public debates, but also within the arts and the
sciences. However, the prominent science philosopher Bruno Latour takes the
term very seriously. We are, according to Latour, now ‘facing Gaia’ [3],
invoking the idea of physicist James Lovelock that considers the planet as a
self-regulating system tending towards always new equilibria in response to any
disturbance from within or from outside the planet. The point that Lovelock has
been making for some decades now is that the earth-system is reaching a new
point of disequilibrium that can trigger a planetary response tending towards a
new equilibrium in the future, but this might be one where the human species is
incapable of surviving (because of climatological changes, changes in air
composition, heightened radiation levels, temperature changes and other
crucial ecological factors). Lovelock’s view is gaining more serious attention
in recent years in the earth-sciences, not least in response to the concerns
over climate change.
Most important about the conception of the Anthropocene is that it makes the
distinction between ‘Man’ and ‘Nature’ redundant. Instead it emphasises the
tightly interconnected network of associations between humans and what Latour
has termed non-humans (animal and plant life, minerals, gasses, water, air, and
technological infrastructures). It is now clearer than ever that local
interventions, regardless of whether they originate from the sciences, the
arts, design or engineering, have global consequences. Every local intervention
reconfigures the network of associations between humans and non-humans and must
be considered on both levels at the same time.
The problem is of course the enormous abstraction of such planetary scale
processes, the slowness of their long-tail effects (that stand in stark
contrast to the immediacy of the real-time economy), and the non-linear nature
of these processes that might develop ever so slowly but can suddenly reach a
tipping point, a singularity, where a radically new set of conditions emerges
(global warming being the most obvious example). While the statistics speak
ever more clearly and unambiguously about this problem, its communication to a
wider audience and its translation into effective policies falls short of this
imminent threat. To a large extent this is the result of the gap between
abstract data and lived experience. Science alone cannot resolve this problem -
it needs more imaginative approaches that can only come from a
supra-disciplinary perspective.
Reappraising subjectivity in the ArtScientific process
Subjectivity, the holy grail of the contemporary arts is inadmissible as
scientific method. Perhaps here we find the greatest rift between the two
domains. The ‘operators’ of science will readily admit that intuition and thus
a subjective stance plays a key-role in scientific discovery. However, they
will immediately add to this that in order to turn a subjective hunch into a
scientific view such intuitions must be transformed into intersubjective
methods and experiments with verifiable and preferably repeatable results. In
the Arts, conversely, intersubjectivity is merely an option, and one often
looked upon with some suspicion (as in the case of collective or
community-based art practices). There seems to be little opportunity for
bridging this divide.
Still, scientific and technological history is full of singular personalities
who shifted directions in both scientific enquiry as well as technological
development. Needless to say from artists we have come to expect nothing less
than a ‘singular personality’. When talking in 2011 in video conference to
Siegfried Zielinski during the Techno-Ecologies symposium at RIXC in Riga [4],
who spoke directly from the Vilém Flusser archive in Berlin, I pressed him on
this particular point. The question was what role, if any, subjectivity, the
kind of subjectivity that we associate with the arts, plays in the ‘deep time
relations of the Arts, Sciences and Technologies’ that Zielinski’s wonderful
and monumental Variantology project is investigating? [5] Visibly delighted by
this question Zielinski explained that subjectivity was exactly at the very
heart and origin of his project. One of the aims of the Variantology project is
to make clear the vital role subjectivity plays equally in artistic,
scientific, and technological exploration and discovery, and how it informs the
desire for a diversity of praxis that Zielinski, and with him many others
including myself, is looking for in the Variantology project.
In praise of amateurism
ArtScience celebrates amateurism and the cultural figure of the amateur. When
artists venture into the domain of the sciences they inevitably become
amateurs, and vice versa the same holds true for scientists venturing into the
domain of the arts. This is a good thing. The word ‘amateur’ derives from the
Latin word ‘amator’, lover and the verb ‘amare’, which means ‘to love’. The
amateur is someone who is primarily motivated by love, in this case for the
arts and sciences, yet is not tied to professional conventions.
This characterisation of the cultural figure of the amateur was recognised as
particularly productive by the American arts collective Critical Art Ensemble
(CAE) for a critical public engagement with scientific research and method. CAE
mount many of their artworks as public education projects in which advanced
ideas about genetic engineering and the politics of the life-sciences are
explored hands on with the audience. Through this activity CAE stimulates a
broad participation of non-specialist citizens in a vital area of scientific
and (bio-)technological research and development
In their 2001 book Digital Resistance CAE celebrate the figure of the amateur:
“Amateurs have the ability to see through the dominant paradigms, are freer to
recombine elements of paradigms thought long dead, and can apply everyday life
experience to their deliberations. Most important, however, amateurs are not
invested in institutionalised systems of knowledge production and policy
construction, and hence do not have irresistible forces guiding the outcome of
their process such as maintaining a place in the funding hierarchy, or
maintaining prestige-capital” [6]
Conversely, the amateur artist has the ability to see through the peculiar
particularities of the art system (the art market and the global reputation
machinery of museums, public galleries, and dedicated publications). The
ArtScientist / ScienceArtist is simply looking for a truly expanded field
beyond the limitations of disciplinary codifications.
Aesthetics of ArtScience: (New-) Materialist rather than Idealist
Art as an Idea is not enough. ArtScience is a materialist practice, but a
progressive one. It shares affinities with new materialism, which combines a
materialist perspective with attention for issues of gender, race, the position
and rights of non-humans, and a special care for diversity (cultural,
biological, ethnical). The network of associations between humans and
non-humans, what Bruno Latour has named ‘the collective’, is the expanded field
that ArtScience operates in.
The aesthetics of ArtScience reflect this materialist perspective - they
position im/material phenomena in a wider axiomatic context. That is to say
that ArtScience invites a reflection on the different values at play in these
phenomena. This questioning of the value-system governing ArtScience
experiments aims to transcend the performativity of Science as well as overly
ideational preoccupations of Art.
This is not a regressive move back inside / behind the medium. Alike
post-conceptual art, ArtScience can utilise any medium, appropriate any
material, any process. The materialist perspective rather means a foregrounding
of the sensible in the process of ideation. It aims to ‘demonstrate’ (through
experiment), even if that which it aims to demonstrate, qua definition, cannot
be demonstrated. As such it can produce both positive signs (signs that show
something), as well as negative signs (signs that show that something cannot be
demonstrated / presented / represented).
From this we can see that ArtScience builds on the great expansion of
aesthetics that the 20th century Avantgarde movements in the arts battled for.
ArtScience thus continues in the footsteps of that heroic long march through
all the registers of human experience that the Avantgardes of the previous
millennium had begun, and expands it with all the registers of non-human
experience.
Beyond Good and Evil in Science and Art
ArtScience can never occupy an elevated moral ground. It can never be innocent,
nor naive. As a matter of principle ArtScience needs to shed the moral a-priori
of art, but also reject the non-lieu of science. The assumption that the
perspective of the artist / the arts on scientific and technological processes
invokes an ethical point of view in and of itself is simply an embarrassing
display of arrogance. It first of all completely denies an ethical position to
the ‘operators’ of science and engineering. It seems to assume that scientists,
researchers, engineers are either unable or unwilling to articulate an ethical
position. Unfortunately we see this implicit (sometimes even explicit)
assumption in numerous art projects entering the domains of the sciences.
More importantly, such a position completely ignores the fact that there is a
lot of great art that is corrupt, amoral, or even immoral, anti-social,
incorrect, outrageous, potentially criminal, or deeply abject. If one truly
believes in the freedom of the arts to appropriate any material, topic, or
process then this includes the freedom to violate any social norm, to be abject
and incorrect, to be morally corrupted, or ambiguously morally suspect. As an
artist, if one follows this rule, one then has to be ready to face the
consequences (rejection, exclusion, imprisonment).
Equally, though, ArtScience cannot accept the non-lieu of the sciences
contained in the basic statement; “We are only figuring out how this works, how
it will be applied is not up to us.”, or worse: “We only measure things.” The
ethical dimension of the arts and the sciences is part and parcel of ArtScience
practice.
This indicates that the ethics of each situation, each project, each experiment
must be carefully considered on a case by case basis. There is no space to
assume comfortable a-priori positions. Instead ArtScience asks for a constant
articulation of one’s ethical position, even if that position is incurably
anti-social and immoral.
Significance / contribution of ArtScience
Based on the set of characteristics laid out here the question is what could be
the (specific) contribution of ArtScience to our collective enterprise?
It is possible to make a few preliminary suggestions, though it is wise to
proceed diligently here:
1) ArtScience as a ‘transversal’ practice can establish new methodological
bridges
The practice of ArtScience is transversal ‘by nature’. ArtScientists are
transversalists - they operate across and between the different registers of
the sciences and the arts. In this nomadic movement ArtScience can help to
establish new methodological bridges between different disciplines within and
across the domains of the arts and sciences. It is hard to overestimate the
importance of this role of ArtScience as a go-between.
Consequently ArtScience practices hold an exceptional potential for
methodological innovation. This might very well be their most important
contribution to both the fields of the arts and the sciences.
2) ArtScience can enable new modes of knowledge production
Through its nomadic movement across and between the different registers of the
sciences and the arts ArtScience can enable new modes of knowledge production.
Particularly in the reconciliation of scientific method and artistic
subjectivity ArtScience can open up new domains of knowledge production. It is
also here that ArtScience can find its own ‘genius’ - that what sets it apart
from other worthwhile human endeavours.
3) ArtScience can enable expanded aesthetic experiences
By insisting on the sensible in the ideational, and through the incorporation
of the most advanced and sophisticated scientific methods and findings,
ArtScience can enable expanded aesthetic experiences that build on the legacies
of the Avantgardes, while remaining firmly locked in a contemporary sensibility
that anchors itself in (new-) materialist approaches.
4) Closing the experiential gap between rigorous scientific enquiry and
subjective appraisal
Through the reconciliation of scientific method and subjective experience
ArtScience can contribute to efforts to close the experiential gap between the
abstractions of scientific enquiry and the experience of everyday life.
ArtScience can do for science what art does so well for itself: turn abstract
ideas into lived experiences. Here we see the unique intersection at work of
two methodological universes considered to be ‘incommensurable’ [7], where in
fact they are complementary and mutually reinforcing modes of understanding and
experience.
5) ArtScience can foster a heightened sensitivity for the emergent
Like the field of ArtScience itself the universe is best understood as
‘emergent’. ArtScience is not interested in creating grand statements of
artistic genius. Instead it is driven by a curiosity for phenomena, processes
and sensations in becoming. ArtScience locates itself deliberately outside of
the domain of the arts and even largely outside of the confines of human
society. ArtScience studies and composes the processual, the becoming, the
‘pressing crowd of incipiences’ (Massumi). In short, ArtScience is a study of
the emergent.
6) ArtScience can and must produce a deeper engagement in the ‘progressive
composition of the good common world’
Given the pressures of intense demographic growth and planetary resource
exhaustion ArtScience cannot but take responsibility for finding alternative
pathways into the future. It therefore needs to engage in what Bruno Latour has
described so beautifully as the ‘progressive composition of the good common
world’ [8] of humans and non humans. We may dream about the limitlessness of
the universe, but we are bound to Earth. We cannot escape facing Gaia.
Eric Kluitenberg, May 19 / December 8, 2017.
References:
1: http://arts.cern/
2: http://www.anthropocene.info/
3: A thorough introduction to Latour’s recent thinking on the subject can be
found in the documentation of the Gifford lectures he delivered in Edinburgh,
February 2013 under te title “Facing Gaia”.
see: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/node/487
4: Archived event pages can be found at:
http://rixc.lv/11/en/festival.info.html
5: See for an overview: http://variantology.com/?lang=en
6: Critical Art Ensemble, Digital Resistance, New York: Autonomedia, 2001, pp.
8-9.
7: ‘Incommensurable’: by virtue of the absence of a shared scale of
measurement / qualification incomparable.
8: Bruno Latour (2004): The Politics of Nature - How to Bring the Sciences
into Democracy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA).
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