Towards a Methodology of Ar2s2c Research. Jan 24th

Transcription

1 Towards a Methodology of Ar2s2c Research Jan 24th

2 The change of climate 20th century ar6s6c climate is saturated by rethinking of prac6ce, star6ng with fashionable isms in 1900 and postmodernism aaer the WWII First art colonies took the technological principle at face value, then they denied its validity To emphasize the gulf between technique and art became important

3 Research focuses As we already know, in ethnography a different kind of knowledge was appreciated, different from posi6ve, distanced, generalized Closely to human life, to condi6ons of everyday life, to everyday chores, to customs and habits, to what there is became meaningful Qualita6ve methods and the value of descrip6ve approaches became important

4 Qualita6ve? Qualita6ve here refers to meanings people give their life condi6ons in the context of everydayness Thus generaliza6on blurs the recep6on; only an exact descrip6on is able to recollect what is significant quality does not refer to any good or bad (or well and badly done) but to what can be understood by outsiders in some life context

5 Qualita6ve We use the concept of quality since the meaning (of anything) is the reason to iden6fy, recognize or recollect it in some dis6nc6ve context, e.g. in everydayness, in separateness, as holy, as forbidden, as inadequate, etc. Nothing in itself is anything, only taken it in a context will bestow upon it a quality, i.e. meaning

6 Art prac6ce Since the beginning of 19 th century, ar6sts studios became hothouses of how to represent world: representa6on of philosophical, poli6cal ideas, ideas for world view or belief, or scien6fic and knowledgebased certainty Representa6on, in its very basic sense, became a topic; it has been a known theme for ever but now it became a recognized topic

7 Art prac6ce The background is art prac6ce: someone is trained (perhaps even a bit talented?) in some skills and ends up to use the skills to show something, to make something to appear as something, and thus makes others exposed to this (others oaen without the skill and training) Representa6on, appearing, and exposi6on were the talk of the studios

8 Documented e.g. in le\ers, diaries, drawings, poems That discussion started a discourse that can be taken as an incep6on of a new knowledge: not any more a natural science (like op6cs, etc.) but a cultural viewpoint that ques6ons the way things are put into exhibit, like witnesses to a world view

9 Grey era Grey area (and era, too) is the end of the 19 th c. and the era before WWI Writers were ac6ve to show how literary art may imagine worlds that are truer than this one and at the same change this one, not being cri6cal or presen6ng utopias but showing the everyday ness in ironic, sardonic, mockery light, ridiculing the normal and status quo

10 Grey era If done as art, such pa\erns may change epistemic disposi6ons, turn things into something not yetknown, and perhaps devaluing the coordinates of knowledge It remained unknown to what extent such a behaviour is traceable to ar6s6c thinking, ar6s6c knowledge, or even ar6s6c research but what is known is that the aggressive impact of imaginary in everyday life became a poli6cal vehicle that with 6me prepared us to take ar6s6c knowledge quite seriously

11 Rebels with causes People like Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire, ar6sts groups like expressionists, dadaists, futurists, are known for their deproduc6ve but impressive ac6vi6es: They were against and they ridiculed many a thing And with that they widened the playground where people were allowed to work, know and create

12 Opening Such an opening not only created more space but as well a need for new means, par6cularly means of imagina6on, combina6on, and opera6on They claimed that we always are confined to very close playground, narrow minded in its interpreta6on and too close to others in opinion They wanted to show that that is not a necessity

13 Then It took many decades before an ar6st started to compile an overall method or canon out of the ar6s6c work A more systema6c, school like ins6tu6ons for ar6sts made it important to compile methods and approaches that previously were only individual ideas sca\ered in informal documents E.g. Bauhaus gave a reason to such an ini6a6ve

14 Paul Klee Everyone knows that Paul Klee ( ) was such compiler but who has read Klee? Ever? (I have not met a person who has) Klee started with a classical approach: light, colours, op6cs, natural science type approach But soon he found out that that is a wrong direc6on: an ar6st is no a scien6st but a living person with a special des6ny: to be only one being with one history and place

15 Paul Klee An ar6st does not work from above, from generalized view, but from a localized view that cannot be replaced by anything else The historical des6ny confines an ar6st s knowledge and skill to something that can be shared with others, yes, but not really taken as anything universal or valid to all The knowledge is not en6rely historical but for a large part it is historical

16 Paul Klee The part that is not historical comes from the laws of drawing : dot, line, surface, space They are known to us but in art not geometrically The part that is not historical comes from the reality of recep6on : colours, light, shade, forms We live with them and they are not exhausted in defini6ons

17 Paul Klee For Klee, an ar6st s knowledge is an unending history of Nature: an ar6st belongs to Nature and carries on what there is in Nature in his/ her manner, as ar6st s thinking and working Thus the knowledge is not natural though it is surpassing Natural; it is ar6s6c in both sense of the word: created by an ar6st and ar6s6c as exceeding Natural beyond Nature

18 Paul Klee Klee opened up same pa\erns as did ethnographic scholars: the posi6on of the ar6st is the key to ar6s6c knowledge One must posit itself clearly and dis6nc6vely, iden6fy one s profession and recognize the objec6ves thus set oneself If you work as an ar6st you don t work as a therapist, poli6cian, philosopher, chemist, mathema6cian

19 Paul Klee An ar6st s knowledge (as his/her skills, training, objec6ves, etc.) originate in being an ar6st, the knowledge develops in ar6s6c work and its significance comes with art This does not mean that an ar6st could not be something else as well (as people oaen are, somethin else); instead this indicates that if taken as an ar6st one has specialized knowledge and skills that may contribute a difference to the shared mesosphere

20 Paul Klee In his Unending Natural History & Imagina8ve Thinking (Unendliche Naturgeschichte & Das bildnerische Denken) Klee gives his teaching notes as a model of an ar6s6c procedure: He exploits all knowledge at hand but combines it towards his very individual interest: towards ar6s6c representa6on of something Though he draws on scien6fic informa6on and cultural command the context is self made and thus, really, the only criterion of applicability of knowledge is himself, the person

21 Paul Klee Klee claims again and again that an ar6st with trained skills belongs to two worlds: to the one where all are, and to the other where there are no one else The imagina6on (nowadays not so well known en6ty ) makes the la\er one complete whereas the former one stays incomplete to the extent of despera6on Because of the despera6on ar6sts always will have an audience that is ready to accept whatever ar6sts serve them as truth

22 A graph

23 Ar6s6c research Ar6s6c research refers to such a mul6farious rela6on the subject has in his/her world, without any kind of abandonment of its mul6ple nature At the first sight, nothing is excluded from the research, nothing is as such outside Inclusion is included in ar6st s working method though s/he may exclude, during the work, anything in order to create a clear approach

24 One world For Klee, world is one and there is no exclusion that would make the approach more inclusive The contrary is true in scien6fic and philosophic explora6on where e.g. the existence is necessary for something to become studied Ar6s6c research does not exclude a phenomenon even if we are not sure of its reality in the sense of existence, provided that it becomes significant in human life (i.e., experienced)

25 Klee When Paul Klee explains his ideas of ar6s6c prac6ce he always keeps to rela6on between doer and done (as a constant responsibility) mutual media6on of world (like a game) readability of art work (shareable expression) well managed prac6ce as the condi6on of art in worldly contexts only

26 Klee Thus for Klee art is research in the sense that art is a discourse on world that we share Art is a discourse that benefits from sensory, conceptual, imaginary and linguis6c sources but it is, as an en6rety, something quite different: a quality prac6ce that not only studies significant phenomena but as well bestows significance to phenomena it makes appear