Towards a Methodology of Artistic Research Nov 22nd
Opposition The Modernist period (1730-1945) was rather one-ideaed: no real opponents of scientific, reason-based thinking Romanticism brought a revival of medievalism: art and craft movement in UK, later in US; National Romanticism emphasized old things but not the ones really contemporary, and thus Romanticism was only an ornament, a tool in the hands of political activists
Opposition But there emerged some new light in technébased thinking and doing, mainly in the end of 19 th c. First is the US movement that later was named in various ways but first it was only an opposition to theoretical and scientific schooling: a yearning to natural way of life, to value the individual experience, to give new credence to hand and body, and craft
Thoreau The main representative was Henry David Thoreau who was trained in Harvard but never received his diploma; he was wellread and knew the sciences and arts but preferred to live differently His diary-like book Walden (1854) is the most important source of American transcendentalism, a movement that propagated the sense of solidarity between people via techné, doing the everyday life in simple way of living and in craft
Thoreau T explains item by item what and how he made his own living when lived in the forest alone, in the pace of seasons and weather It is NOT a book of a sustainable way of living BUT a book of forcing oneself to cope with primitive conditions with mere hands and natural stamina Thoreau claims that he is after the limits of his own craft and resourcefulness And it is not only HIS but anybody s ( thus the title transcendentalism )
Thoreau From the recent viewpoint what T did seems not so special but in his own time he was bitterly criticized by in papers because of his quitting the modern way of life and the special position of man as a theory-led, science-led being He was going back, to primitivism, to magic, to times where man was not yet man but just a nature s creature that only had its natural resources to its rescue
Thoreau T himself saw that the modern man is less dependent on his own cleverness, himself as the resource of his being, and too far individual to ever survive as a species Individualism became possible because of the abstracted view of world that allowed the separateness of man and other beings Thus man became abstracted as well: we think we are elsewhere than we are, always leaning on something else, never entirely present, never making us present
Thoreau T s message is that the more abstracted knowledge becomes (formalized, universalized) the less world is dependent on man s skills: There come between word and man mediators that are man made but not entirely managed by man, like electricity, combustion engine, wireless communication, And, then, even more a control mechanism of social life that does not count on single man s own estimation of life s values but overrides it, as a mediator between man and society, and then, as the sole value of values Mediators become the value source
Thoreau T shows how human craft, in everyday chores, is the right scale to measure what is important, what is not His examples do not indicate that human culture is an unnecessary structure but that losing one s bodily readiness before world s challenges will be disastrous Thus crafts, practiced for their own sake, is important and it carries on a tradition that has proved to be vital for man Man has not changed, man is still flesh and blood although culture has changed into a virtual structure
Affect-based movements In Europe, in the end of 19 th c. several new movements appeared that tried to reveal both the insufficiency and inadequacy of the Enlightenment that had turned into a Positivism, to a belief system that claimed that Reality is made of Facts that can be named, listed and manipulated in a Scientific Manner The new movements are mostly not practicebased but some are; they all claim that reality is more than mind can ever achieve
Affect-based movements Most celebrated was Henri Bergson s idea of elan vital (the vital surge) that includes all beings but in culture can only come into appearance in artistic and craft-like making, doing and preparing It is the unknown in all emergence, the creativity in human doing Bergson thought that we are a part of Nature s surge that is here bestowed with human skill
Affect-based movements Bergson tried to explain how the stream of consciousness in its immediacy is as well a part of the same surge, like touching Nature Bergson s quite fictitious ideas were very effective since they were totally against the main stream: he became the philosopher of the creative class though not much of his ideas, really, was operational in any concrete sense
Affect-based movements Bergson was like a sign to many others: in the beginning of 20 th c. human life as if affected, not any more deduced and counted, became the story of the day Experience became the new topic Practice, esp. craft, became meaningful, as if it were the laboratory of experience: manageable, limited, supervised Artists themselves started to ponder the meaning of experience and artistic skills The birth of the avant-garde
Affect-based movements In France, Bergson had followers both in art, craft and research; but he invigorated new discussion in Germany and some other countries as well Phenomenological movement started in a very theoretical and science-bound vein but it turned towards practice in its realistic wing (Ingarden, Scheler, Stein; later Merleau-Ponty, Sartre) Human life was understood from the viewpoint of experience and human practices, e.g. craft and arts, were taken for a continuous building of being a human
Affect-based movements The word affect became the key word: its meaning is not entire clear but the use of it indicated that world was taken as the horizon of practice and man is affected by something that enters from outside practice is a situation where man is instantly and constantly influenced by something s/he cannot control, either taken as a criterion of working or the source of the surge
Affect-based movements The word affect indicated as well that the practice is a place where two dimensions meet: man and world Romanticism gave words that only took man s dimension seriously (like create, genius, intent, etc) affect shot down that language and instead showed interest in the space in-between, not entirely independent of man but never in man s control entirely From the viewpoint of research this meant that man is not studying man s creativity, genius or intents but the dynamism where a special kind of knowledge will be built, a meeting point
Affect-based movements In the new language, affects were interpreted as a manifestation of some experience, or knowledge Manifestation is not doing but it is part of practice, like the significance of practice Man manifests in practice something that is an interpretation of the affective but man never knows really whether the manifestation is right, enough (etc) From now on, manifestation is as enigmatic to man as is world or himself
Affect-based movements In avant-garde movements this is said quite clearly: we do this but we don t know if this has the meaning we associate with it but this has meaning for sure This has been read as if the artists were saying that they only have some unconscious meaning but from the point of view of historical interpretation this has nothing to do with unor any consciousness Instead, this means that the meanings are free to be reinterpreted by anybody alongside with other people s affects (=experiences, ideas, understanding, horizon, intents, agenda, etc) What takes place in practice is not a planned procedure but a compound event that no one can control Practice became a new battlefield where man started to fight with world (expressionism, existentialism, etc)
New World During the 20 th c., with the help of many artistic and political movements, practice, techné, craft became a part of blended picture: history of moral and politics gave no hints how to mix techné and thinking; therefore: endless debate on moral in practice; aggressive claims for freedom of any moral; mixtures of theoretical and practical traditions without clear picture of what is going on; research that does not recognize the characteristics of its object; attempt to get power over practice with the help of epistemic tradition; belief in magic (psychoanalysis, creativity talk, child psychology, Eastern Wisdom, an alike); in the end, claims for anything goes policy in the disguise of artistic freedom, etc.
New Structures Knowledge Power (universities, academies, institutional private research centres, etc) and Economic Power (state, finance and banking) took over after the WWII: reification of practice: procedures must be described so they become transferable and trainable, priced as well, and then they are not their doers property anymore but a corporate property end