EARN/Smart Culture Conference
January 26–30, 2021
The Postresearch Condition
After an omnipresent “Research Decade,” the concept of artistic research currently seems to be in need of a recharge. Pressing questions are: Should we talk about a postresearch situation or a postresearch condition? Could this be compared with how poststructuralism relates to structuralism as its philosophical comprehension and the elaboration of its consequences? And how could a postresearch condition address contemporary art practices?
To answer these questions, it is important to start from the three conceptual spaces that fundamentally determine what we mean by research: creative practice (experimentality, art making, potential of the sensible); artistic thinking (open-ended, speculative, associative, non-linear, haunting, thinking differently); and curatorial strategies (topical modes of political imagination, transformational spaces for encounters, reflection and dissemination)—and to comprehend these spaces in their mutual, dynamic coherence as a series of indirect triangular relationships.
From whatever conceptual space one departs, an artistic research practice could signify a transversal constellation—as a creative proposition for thought in action. Yet, that mode of research could never be reduced to a method of one of the three constituents. Thus, artistic research cannot be equated with creative innovation, disciplinary knowledge production, or political activism. It seems urgent now—and this is the starting point of this conference—to profoundly challenge and question the issue of how to articulate and present the condition of the intersection between the three conceptual spaces. For this purpose, an intensive program of workshops, presentations, propositions, screenings, and publications has been developed.
Programme
Tuesday, January 26
7:30-9pm: Proposition by Peter Osborne (Kingston University, London), No Going Back – But not Forward to There Either, and discussion with Hito Steyerl (UdK Berlin). Moderated by Henk Slager (Conference Organizer, HKU Utrecht).
Wednesday, January 27
3-6pm: EARN Working Group 1: Methodologies (co-organizer: Uniarts Helsinki). Workshop: Continuous Prototypes. Rethinking Artistic Research through the Concept of the Continuous Prototype. In the workshop we introduce the Continuous Prototype—a metaphor, a construction—through which it is possible to examine both artistic work and research practice.
7:30-9pm: Vytautas Michelkevicius (Vilnius Academy of Art), Launch of the Atlas of Diagrammatic Imagination: Maps in Research, Art and Education (eds. Vytautas Michelkevicius & Lina Michelkevice, VDA 2019). Florian Cramer (Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam), Research practices of self-organized collectives vs. managerial visions of artistic research. Moderated by Arja Veerman (HKU Utrecht).
Thursday, January 28
3-6pm: EARN Working Group 2: Sustainability (co-organizer: UCL London/Slade School of Fine Art). Workshop: Sustainability. Re-Visioning the work of Art and the Academic Conference. This workshop addresses two overarching questions: What are the methods and forms of a sustainable art practice? What are the possible models for a sustainable “academic” conference?
7:30-9pm: Proposition by Denise Ferreira da Silva (University of British Colombia, Vancouver), Corpus Infinitum. Moderated by Mick Wilson (HDK-Valand, Gothenburg University).
Friday, January 29
10am-1pm: EARN Working Group 3: Curatorial Issues (co-organizer: HDK-Valand, Gothenburg University). Workshop: Expo-Facto. Into the Algorithm of Exhibition? The ascendancy within the contemporary art system of e-flux announcements, social media posting, art-blogging, website mediation of exhibition and jpeg-enabled art sales has been in place for some time.
2-3pm: Proposition by Terike Haapoja & Laura Gustafsson (Helsinki/New York), How to Become Human? Moderated by Annette Krauss (HKU Utrecht).
3:15-6pm: EARN Working Group 4: The Politics of Aesthetics (co-organizer: Academy of Fine Arts Vienna). How to challenge the relationship between power and knowledge, the ferocity of epistemic violence, or the spectacle of the pain of others? In this workshop we claim that it is precisely the opacity of artistic practices, their refusal to be reduced to meaning and the radical indeterminacy of form, relation, and artistic matter, which has the potential to support (artistic) research’s striving for decolonizing, destraightening and adjacency. How can we unfold this potential and translate these means from the realm of aesthetics into that of the social and the political? Can an encounter with alterity in the aesthetic realm prepare for an encounter with alterity in the social field? Introduced by a performative intervention: Ruth Jenrbekova.
7:30-9pm: Proposition by Amanda Beech (CalArts, Los Angeles), How Art Ought to Think. Moderated by Iris van der Tuin (Utrecht University).
Saturday, January 30
10-11:30am: Collective Proposition: Angela Anderson, Anca Benera, Rehema Chachage, Berhanu Ashagrie Deribew, Masimba Hwati, Hyo Lee, Serena Lee, Azar Mahmoudian, Aykan Safoğlu, Anna Tjé (PhD in Practice program, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Listening/ Sounding and the Politics of Aesthetics. Moderated by Kitty Zijlmans (Leiden University).
12-2pm: EARN Working Group 5: Value (co-organizer: Luca School of Arts, Brussels). Art and research create new forms of insight, experience, communities of learning, non-disciplinary forms of knowledge and action. Their recognition and appropriate application require different forms of attention, valuing, and articulating what we value. Outlining the roles of trust, recognition, and expressing preferences, this session asks fundamental questions around what we value, at a time when the prosperity of life—including our own—on this planet, is questioned daily.
2:30-3:30pm: Closing Proposition by Irit Rogoff (Goldsmiths, University of London), Not Yet. Moderated by Odile Heynders (Tilburg University).
Venue/Virtual Host:
HKU University of the Arts, Utrecht
BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht
EARN (European Artistic Research Network)
www.artresearch.eu
More information:
www.hku.nl/postresearchcondition
postresearchcondition [at] hku.nl
EARN/Smart Culture Conference organized in collaboration with HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, NWO (Dutch Research Council), and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht.
