https://padlet.com/allanparsons/informedmatters The proceedings of the UAL Informed Matters community of practice en-us 2018-02-03 13:20:08 UTC 2023-02-12 13:16:16 UTC hello@padlet.com allanparsons https://padlet.com/allanparsons/informedmatters/wish/227748454 In attendance at the Informed Matters community meeting of 30 January 2018 were Neil Cummings, Virna Koutla, Lois Bentley, Georgios Tsagdis, Andrew Chesher and Allan Parsons.

Keywords: Art, Architecture, Design, Philosophy, Science, Discipline, Experimentation, Experimental, Experience, Situation, Event, Dispositif, Apparatus, Para-Site, Iteration, Difference, Academy, Matters of concern, Public, Res publica, Politics

Rather than simply engaging with texts that are critical of the contemporary institution of higher education, with its output and accreditation orientation and the strategic learning that it encourages, the purpose of the Informed Matters meetings in 2018 is to discuss and implement alternative practices that are open to different and diverse learning exchanges. The goal is to develop alternative practices of art, design, architecture, science and philosophically-informed humanities education, organised around 'matters of concern' (Latour, 2004; Latour and Sanchez-Criado, 2007), and to do them together or through one another, and not just in the sense of academic (textual) interdisciplinarity. 

Depending on the metaphorical landscape being invoked, this may be a question of dwelling in the ruins of the university, overgrowing them with green shoots, ^[1] or forming a para-site or para-cite, iterating while altering the 'academy', both the Platonic academy and the art academy.

Examples of alternative art education practices were identified at a previous meeting at the end of 2017. They included Open School East; Antiuniversity Now; Michael Asher's pedagogy, for example, his post-studio seminar class; Joseph Beuys' pedagogy, for example, his Information Action; and the (non-existent) 'university of dissensus', as discussed by Bill Readings in his book The University in Ruins, an idea that could be extended through the writings of such dissensual writers as Arendt, Lyotard, Derrida, Ranciere and Mouffe/Laclau.

The additional example of the University of the Underground was raised at the meeting and its modus operandi discussed, comparing it to that of Open School East; as was the example of the event 'PARADE: public modes of assembly and forms of address' with which Neil was involved. Neil outlined how the concern with 'publicness' had come about and stressed the need for theory and practice to be interwoven in a principled process of collective development.

Widening the historical net, further examples might include the Berkeley teach-ins, organised around the matter of concern of the Vietnam war, the teaching of Herbert Marcuse at San Diego, discussed in the documentary Herbert's Hippopotamus and the sit-in/teach-in at Hornsey College of Art in 1968, as portrayed in Patricia Holland's The Hornsey Film.

Irrespective of the distinction between analytic and continental philosophy, Georgios raised the issue of how difficult it is to practise philosophy or to do philosophy within the constraints imposed upon philosophy as a discipline within the contemporary 'academy'. Similarly, Lois raised the issue of the difficulty of realising the conjunction of art and science in the form of practice-based research other than textual production. Virna and Andrew cited further examples from architecture and art practice, respectively, expressing the need to re-define the boundaries of disciplinary practice towards a more open and a more immersive experimentation: experimenting with, being part of the experiment as a living situation involving reflexive resposiveness and learning, rather than experimenting on a subject or an object under pre-determined conditions and codified parameters.

Given the importance of situation in this approach, a situation which incorporates a variety of forms of 'textuality' and 'writing-in-general', perhaps, as one line of investigation, we might consider the notion of the 'event' as discussed, for example, in the work of Alain Badiou and Gilles Deleuze.

For Badiou, an event is "an occurrence that introduces radical novelty into existence, an occurrence that is literally unintelligible in terms of the conceptual structures that define the situation from which it emerges" (Gutting, 2011: 173). On this basis, Badiou recognises an event as a revolution in one or more of the four domains of existence that he defines, i.e. science, politics, art and love.

For Deleuze, in dialogue with Foucault, in an ontology of difference free of negation, an event differs within itself. It is not a secondary differentiation between things that are essentially the same. Such events escape the logic of the excluded third (either A or not-A), in the form of a multiple affirmation that is not subject to the contradiction of being and non-being. An event is a recurrence or repetition of difference (a difference that differs from itself). (Gutting, 2011: 95-97)

Similarly, given the importance of the notion of experimentation, the experimental and experience, it may be valuable to consider the work of Foucault (1980) on the 'dispositif' or 'concrete social apparatus' (Agamben, 2009; Deleuze, 1992). Since one cannot operate 'outside' of the apparatus, how is it possible to alter the parameters of the apparatus from 'within', opening up to the question of reflexivity, in one direction, and to the question of actor-networking, or rather actant-rhizomaticity, on the other hand.

The date of the next meeting is set for 27 February 2018, at a location to be decided.

Notes

[1] In Mark Carver's (2014) words,  "Finding more time for thought, for advancing our own learning, for 'unproductive' activity, for occasionally sticking with our beliefs, is not just about bringing some scholarliness back into our lives - it is forming green shoots within the corporate university: overgrowing the ruins, preserving endangered species."

References

Agamben, G. (2009). What is an apparatus? and other essays, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Carver, M. (2014). The University in Dissent [Book review]. Practitioner Research in Education, 8 (1), 113–114. Available from http://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/1496/%0AUsage [Accessed 2 February 2018].

Deleuze, G. (1992). What is a dispositif? In: Michel Foucault, Philosopher: essays translated from the French and German by Timothy J. Armstrong. New York, NY: Routledge, 159–168.

Foucault, M. (1980). The Confession of the flesh, In Power/Knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977, edited by Colin Gordon. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 194-228

Gutting, G. (2011). Thinking the impossible: French philosophy since 1960. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30 (2), 225–248.

Latour, B. and Sánchez-Criado, T. (2007). Making the ‘Res Public’ (interview with Bruno Latour). Ephemera - Theory & Politics in Organization, volume 7 364–371. Available from http://www.ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/7-2latour-sanchez-criado.pdf [Accessed 7 March 2016].


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