Artistic Research in a World on Fire

What are the stakes of artistic research in a world reckoning with social justice, climate change, and the rise of artificial intelligence? What are the unique forms of knowing and unknowing specific to artmaking? How do they relate to academic knowledge? How can they contribute to the decolonization and indigenization of knowledge? Why is there no established discourse around artistic research in the US? Do US arts infrastructures need to shapeshift to support artistic research?

These are some of the questions raised in Reclaiming Artistic Research (expanded second ed., 2024) in which writer, artist, and curator Lucy Cotter engages in in-depth dialogue with 24 leading artists worldwide to address artistic research in practice. For this New York launch of the newly released book, Cotter will reflect on the currency of artistic research in the US and engage in discussion with two of the book’s artist contributors, Stephanie Dinkins, and Cannupa Hanska Luger. 

The event will include screenings of video work from Luger’s Future Ancestral Technologies project and video documentation of Dinkins’ multi-generational narratives of Black women in Secret Garden. The discussion will be followed by a screening of contributing artist Sky Hopinka’s work Fainting Spells, an experimental filmic meditation invoking the possibility of future mythology.

Please join us at e-flux on Monday, June 3 at 7pm.

Reclaiming Artistic Research is published by Hatje Cantz. This event takes place with the support of Stelo Arts and Culture Foundation, Portland, Oregon, in conjunction with a project residency 2023-24. 

Video screenings

Cannupa Hanska Luger, We Live: Future Ancestral Technologies Entry Log (2019, 3 minutes)
We Live is an entry log from the wider Future Ancestral Technologies project which engages Indigenous futurism, blending media, place, storytelling, and documentation of a living practice. It documents a performative land-based action in which figures in sensory muting regalia use their physical presence to pledge accountability to the land and waters affected by resource extraction and industry.

Stephanie Dinkins, Secret Garden (2021, 3-minute excerpt from documentation video)
Secret Garden is an immersive installation and web experience, illuminating the power and resilience of three generations of Black women. In the work, interactive audio vignettes generate a multi-generational narrative that collapses past, present, and future.

Sky Hopinka, Fainting Spells (2018, 10 minutes)
Told through recollections of youth, learning, lore, and departure, Fainting Spells is an imagined myth for the Xąwįska, or the Indian Pipe Plant, which is used by the Ho-Chunk to revive those who have fainted.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility                 
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.      
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.               
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.