Notes on speeddating session on Artistic Research and Community
Artistic Research as a counter action to art production, authorship, market economy. Propositing a space for hesitation, slowing down and not knowing. `more nuanced and not so formed'.
What are the borders of community? Who and how is one part of a community? At this point questions of permeabity, relationality and hospitability came about. How inclusive and open a community is and what kind of tools can we think of to keep paying attention to the borders of community?
What are the borders of a community, how do we look inside to the community through these borders? are we aware outside of the community, and does what happens in the community also continue outside? How do we feed into the community while being open to the outside?
how far do the borders of a community extend and what is around it (is that also part of it)?
are you part of a community just because you have a desire to or does it require a mutual negotiation of belonging (inclusion and exclusion)?
artistic research needs a frame to be defined as such. There is an entrance into it, it is a common ground where listening and observing creates the condition to host each others ideas and interests.
Amy raised the question, to also speak about an academisation,
how to balance a self - referential approach of artistic research, this "self" is constituted by the many but is also formulating an opposition to an outside, do we see the membrane of the outlines, the periphery?
Can shape shifting be a methology for artistic research to constantly re-shape its outlines?
Using the idea of Artificial Friendship to open up oneself to a community that is not constituted by identification, similarities, agreement but having a sense of dedication, listening, presence, ...
From what I think ... said, from ... too. Artistic Research is about sharing processes. Questioning the impact of it for / on a collective or group. Artificial friendship becomes crucial, where you can be critical but not condescending. As a peer you should be able to open up (in) a space. This counters ...'s the solitary artist. Critique can be destructive too. ... thinks about subjectivity, taste. How to make a collective protocol for interactions within artistic research? What would a protocol for community be? (we think about science) Research is for the world. Who is the public? There is a dominating force from academia, institutions have to justify their work. There is a sedimentation of certain power structures.
Time and the practice of everyday life are intertwined in community. Community is not separated from ways of living
Does a community need presence? How much commitment does it need? Who needs it? Do we need to give attention to whom is not there?
How to address the absent people of a community, how to address absence?
There is a lot of anxiety around community. How much is community a choice?
Community as potentiality for transformation. Is community an utopia. Tension between emmergence and structure. Is community natural??
Are we confirming the community but actually not realizing it? What do we need to realize it?
What I remember talking about was this over-use of the word 'community'. When we address 'community', what are we actually talking about. How 'real' are these communities, or do they only live as imaginaries in our heads? And also, what are outcomes of appropriating a community as 'yours'? Can you actually do that? Thinking further on that, I realised there are also communities that I'm part of without necessarily wanting to be: my family,... It seems communities emerge from a place of necessity. Or at least, there are communities that emerge from a place of necessity. COVID made it clear that we do live in community, and when someone is infected while you've been rubbing your faces against each other the day before, you can't choose to NOT be part of that community (or rather collectivity). However in the care that comes with the COVID situation, collectivities might become communities out of necessity/urgency. Community then becomes a practice rather than a given. I remember Martin telling me: "What's the force that is formulating community". That stuck with me. When we find ourselves in community, what's the work to be done there? What's the urgency? And also, how much do we invest? It makes me think about conditions, which is something a lot of the people this block are busy with. What are the conditions in which this collectivity emerges, and what conditions are necessary to create community. Also, is community something that you can 'want'? I don't want to consume community, which leads back to invisible labour (also something many participants seem to be interested in). Writing this, I'm thinking of the passivity and activity of the formation of communities. But I remember that maybe I shouldn't think further right now, but instead go back to my notes of the speeddating session.
Vera spoke about emergent communities of artistic research that circulate around care. These communities exist around friendship and criticality. Vera refuses to believe criticality should be a point of seperation. A community like this needs affinity, trust, knowledge and time. How probable is it to have all of this in an artistic research environment?
I'm thinking about this contradiction. When we speak about community, we seem to speak about care. I actually don't really know if that has to be like that. I might be part of a community that I don't care to much about. But then, maybe they do care about me? Not sure. And also, what's the means of their care for me or each other? When artistic research is the means of this group does that make us an artistic research community? What do we share? Do we share a curiosity, a hunger to learn? In my conversations people talked about the not-knowing. When there's no hunger to learn, explore and experiment, it's production.
Vladimir of course spoke of institutions. He talked about institutional ground and the move towards self-governance. Community can emerge in this transition. (don't know what this means anymore but I like to imagine together with these words: perceived facts, respected roles and responsibility).
There are different types of community (economy, akademics, neighbourhood, shopping centers etc) , community as a cluster, we are all part of a set of communities, there are many blending into each other, a constant configuration.
Community being constructed by situations, by shared experiences around relational terms such as care, responsibility
Community needs validation and confirmation
research as a commmunity what is the work to be done, to sustain or to fulfill to validate to acknowledge?
Community as a verb.
How do we take care of all of the different communities we are a part of be it a.pass, the communal homes we live in, and the neighborhood we are inhabiting and all of the people that share space with us there?
How do we best consider the needs of the most vulnerable members of our communities and work to make sure that they are cared for?
Is proximity the only thing needed to be considered part of a community?
protokols of how to be together, work together should be incorporated in artistic research more?
care= effort to listen to each other more
AR sharing processes, be in question with
Generosity as means of generating. How do we common this generated thing?
The gap is a trigger and it is this gap that keeps us together, not the common ground.
Listening before talking. The act of listening is important.
Temporality of things, as everything is in constant flux.
What about our internal communities? e.g. gut microbiome. How do we feel internally and find means of listening to the states of being.
"Animals and minerals, plants and animals, and photoautotrophs and chemoheterotrophs are extimates—each is external to the other only if the scale of our perception is confined to the skin, to a set of epidermal enclosures. But human lungs are constant reminders that this separation is imaginary. Where is the human body if it is viewed from with the lung? The larger, massive biotic assemblage the lungs know intimately— including green plants, photosynthetic bacteria, nonsulfur purple bacteria, hydrogen, sulfur and iron bacteria, animals, and microbes—is now what is thought to produce the metabolism of the planetary carbon cycle, which may be on the verge of a massive reorganization due to human action." From Geontologies, Elizabeth Povinelli
Imaginative memberships of community
from what I think ... said, to think about artistic practice and community it is useful to think about what is in opposition to those terms. What is in opposition to that special research environment? Solitary authorship. Solitude in art. Not in production mode, or where the work supports you financially. ... thinks about relational → community → communal → within personal. Community is crucial because it gives you a space (the conditions?) while it is about giving space.
From what I think ... said, from ... and ... too. Conversations were more about the word community than artistic research. Is it possible to be part of a community only through desire for it? Let's fantasize our way into communities! Do you need a mutual contract? Is it a choice to be part of community? What is a hard and less hard community? Is context enough to make you part of it? What do you get out of a community and, as an artist who might work with “community” , do you need to give back to it? For ... artistic research brings thoughts about re-search → search → not knowing → unknown. This is in opposition to production (like ...) because when you produce you know. Brings in an anecdote about working in a community for an art project. When the artists knew what they wanted to do the project didn’t work. When they let go it became fruitful for both parties (artists and community) We have to shift to listening.
From what I think... said, with ..., ... and perhaps ... too? Though now I am not sure. ... was thinking about borders and interstice. What starts to appear there? Borders of a community, what is inside what is outside? Who is legitimating it? Who needs it? How do you think about interstice? Borders can make things hard. … thinks about commitment, how to commit to what you don’t know (from earlier conversation with … this appears too) Production can make a border, a segregation. Time can make or disperse borders. Is a lot of time in opposition to production? What happens if you don’t finish, if you go beyond? Take ideas into your daily life, live with them, let them infiltrate. Now this is the art / life questions and we are back to thinking about the art market. Is that different if you are making art for a community? Does art converse with communities?
From talking with … at the end of speed dating, thoughts taken from our previous conversations and, I think, what we felt was left out. … is not in a place to think about generative community. The word poses a lot of questions. Is community made just through proximity? Do you need to contribute and if so how much? How do you be part of a community without contributing. This is not a comfortable feeling for us. We don’t know how to be productive. Is not showing up an act for the community now? Community comes with ideas of safety but what if you don’t feel safe in a supposed “community”, what to do with paranoia? What would a community without proximity be?
privileges need to be addressed when we speak about community
what is the urge to create and sustain a community at apass? what can we bring in and what can we take with us?
can a community be punctually activated or does it need to be present all the time?
one definition of research could be - how to deal with problems (aesthetic, political...) and who needs this 'problem solving' or rather de-entangling activity?
Art research in connection to the community can be a way of addressing the question of how to change patterns of behaviour collectively. Following this line of thought Asli practice proposes questioning the process of making food. Which can be nicley sumerized in her own almost existential sentence: "I am making a soya sauce to ask myself why am I making a soya souce and not to make a soya souce." Jaime questions what is the glue that holds community together. If I understand correctly he claims that no group (maybe it was no group in the frame of institution) is naturally organized, governance is already involved. Artistic processes have the possibility to initiate the game of playing a community which allows shift of perspectives from governance to possible futures Amy's (through someone else) interest lies in opposite standpoints to the community, which can be found in the authorship, solitude, taking on jobs for the profit. Position of the individual in the community. Friction that is created between art research and art production. Vera raised a question how does a tight community, for example friends, manage to be critical in a productive and inspiring way.
Who suffers the most when we are not aware of the consequences of our choices and actions in a community, what is lost? Who suffers the outcome of these choices? Who dies?