Dear Renate,
Thanks for the intro! I’d like to say a bit about Making Sense… This
is the second interdisciplinary colloquium of Making Sense. The first
was held at the University of Cambridge in 2009. At these events we
want to analyse and discuss the aesthetic encounter and an art
practice as a medium that can help us make sense of the world. We
bring together artists and philosophers, scholars and students,
thinkers and writers, from all around the world, to build an interface
between artistic creation, theoretical debate and academic
scholarship. At the colloquium we want to formulate new ways to frame
and develop discourse, and found a new way of making sense, which can
challenge and invigorate the protocol, regulation and system of
academia. This is a different kind of conference – there is no
hierarchical division between the plenary speakers and the audience,
we have an economy of mutual exchange and intimate debate. This
colloquium can be seen as an artistic creation or installation in
itself. I think we can all be artists. Participants are encouraged to
react and articulate their opinion.
How does this fit into my own work? I am neither specifically a
writer, nor artist, nor philosopher, but use these genres
simultaneously to make sense of the world, to discover my place within
it, and to think about what might threaten our most basic need to
inhabit it. I use art to write philosophy, and I use philosophy to
inspire the plastic forms of art I make; in between my visual,
intellectual and phenomenological experiments I hope to invent a
practical, accessible method for ‘making sense’.
I take academic theory to the creative resources of practising art, in
the efforts to challenge and invigorate the political scholarship of
academic discourse through the basic, replenishing and regenerative
facets of creativity. In this sense I am perhaps a diplomat and
curator who seeks to arrange and mobilise the emancipatory interface
that art can offer everyone, whilst trying to confirm and cement this
chance in the more formal terms of academia.
This is the kind of ethos that lies behind Making Sense the
collective, which is the emerging group of artists and philosophers
who came to the first and are coming to the second colloquium. Making
Sense is bigger than singular events. We are trying to start a
movement. The Making Sense project, beyond the colloquia, is
ultimately about founding a communitarian practice, through art, that
provides a restorative social act. It would be very interesting to
discuss what that means and how it might be possible…
I look forward to hearing your thoughts...
Lorna
2010/10/10 Renate Ferro r...@cornell.edu:
Welcome to our October discussion, ³Contextualizing Making Sense. The
alignment of criticality and configurations of embodiment and space permit
creative flows of networks, resources, research and discussions whose
configurations prove limitless.
Lorna Collins and her team of collaborators have invited Tim and I to
represent empyre this month at the ³Making Sense Colloquium² at the
IRI-Centre Pompidou, Institut Télécom the 19th and 20th of October.
http://www.makingsensesociety.org/ http://www.makingsensesociety.org/
Lorna is a theorist and a PhD student at the University of Cambridge where
she is a Foundation Scholar at Jesus College. Her academic research pushes
to forge the development of Making Sense via her research and writing but
also through various events such as the ³Making Sense² colloquium. The
colloquium brings together a wide variety of international theorists and
artists some of whom will be our guests this month on empyre.
Both independently and collaboratively, Tim and I have worked between the
spaces of theory and practice for many years. Through Tim¹s international
curating as well as his work in founding and directing the Rose Goldsen
Archive for New Media Art and in my case the founding and directing of The
Tinker Factory, an interdisciplinary lab for research and practice we have
independently found venues for forging theory and practice. Together our
collaboration with empyre has given us an opportunity to investigate the
negotiations between theory and practice historically in May 2009 our
discussion Critical Motion Practice merged intersections that entailed both
self-reflective and interactive movement at the intersections of art,
choreography, architecture, activism and theory. Again in September, 2007
our discussion on Critical Spatial Practice highlighted themes of social
responsibility at cross-disciplinary intersections. The questions we asked
revolved between the technological and critical approaches between practice
and theory and how those questions empowered creativity, enhanced artistic
activism and encouraged artistic/performance practice and collaboration.
We are looking forward to joining the Making Sense participants and
anticipate the international online discussion that will evolve with
