we need to talk about 'no-how':

(a new seminar on artistic research)

 

 

"We need to talk about ‘No-How’" is a new research seminar facilitated and organised by Alison Pilkington and Naomi Sex, (practice-based PhD researchers at NCAD:GradCAM). Currently there is much debate and discussion in the emerging field of artistic research around the problematic academization process instigated by the Bologna process to standardise European higher education. ‘Academic’ implies something that already exists in a tradition, whereas the definition of ‘research’ according to the UK Research Assessment Exercise is to be understood as ‘original investigation undertaken in order to gain knowledge and understanding’. A paradoxical arrangement seems to be occurring here. Much of fine art education has moved past 'prescriptive' models of teaching to address wider questions around the dialogue between 'what art is?' and 'how, and why art is produced?'. In fine art education the split between practice and theory, between intellectual and non-intellectual sources of creativity, is still a troubling issue (even though historically it has been repeatedly challenged, particularly since the inception of conceptual art in the 1960’s.) Where do ‘practice’ end and ‘theory’ begin? Can there be 'too much' practice and not enough theory or vice versa? A pluralist approach, that combines academic and artistic research, is fast becoming the norm at most higher education fine art institutions and while this has its merits, it also needs to be critiqued as it potentially adopts a scientific approach to artistic research that favours a weighing and measuring system that as Dieter Lesage (the Belgian philosopher, writer and critic) suggests ‘would become as problematic for artistic research as it is for the Arts and Humanities.’ Perhaps, the specificity of artistic research must be properly acknowledged and defined if art education at postgraduate level is to properly progress and not merely be measured by scientific methods.

 

The art historian, Sarat Maharaj discusses how ‘thinking through the visual’ as he names it needs to be distinguished as a specific form of knowledge distinct from other forms of research and knowing. He argues “the query that crops up right away with the idea of ‘visual art as knowledge production’ is: ‘what sort of knowledge?’ Hard on its heels ‘ what marks out its difference, its otherness?’ Should we not speak of non-knowledge – activity that is neither hard nosed know-how nor its ostensible opposite, ignorance? The question is especially pertinent in today’s expanding knowledge economy that we should not only see as ‘technological development’ but as an emerging overall condition of living that I prefer to speak of as the ‘grey matter’ environs”

 

Will ‘non- knowledge’ or ‘no-how” emerge as a form of research that can encompass academic research? Perhaps it is as Maharaj suggests; “not only about thinking by means of the visual…it is about unpacking it, taking apart its components, scouring its operations. A point that crops up at this juncture is what makes the texture of visual art thinking quite its own, its difference?”

 

We have adopted Maharaj’s term ‘No-How’ for the title of our seminar group, this is an attempt to classify, what we believe is the as yet unnamed type of knowledge production yielded by artistic research. The aim of this seminar is to facilitate a purposeful discourse around these current debates and revise and critically analyse questions that remain unanswered.

 

readings

 

As our point of entry for generating this discourse, we are suggesting the following texts:

MAHARAJ, Sarat(2009) "Know-how and No-how: stopgap notes on ‘method’ in visual art as knowledge production" Art & Research Vol 2. [http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v2n2/maharaj.html]

LESAGE, Dieter (2009) "Whose Afraid of Artistic Research? On Measuring artistic research output" Art & Research Vol 2. [http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v2n2/pdfs/lesage.pdf]

LESAGE, Dieter (200X) ‘A portrait of the Artist as a Researcher’ [http://summit.kein.org/node/233]

Further suggested reading – (examples of texts written by artists)
Mike Kelley Foul Perfection: Essays and Criticism
Louise Bourgeois Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997
Paul Klee Pedagogical Sketchbook
Man Ray Self Portrait: Man Ray
Tacita Dean An Aside

 

 

spring semester 2010

 

The group meets alternate Thursdays 17:00-19:00.

 

     

  • Thursday 28/01/10

    Inaugural meeting to agree the programe of work for the spring semester.

    GradCAM seminar room, Johns Street, Dublin 8.

     

  • Thursday 11/02/10

     

  • Thursday 04/03/10

     

  • Thursday 25/03/10

     

  • Thursday 15/04/10

     

  • Thursday 06/05/10

     

  • Thursday 27/05/10

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For additional information on the collaborating institutions consult www.dit.ie, www.ncad.ie, www.iadt.ie and www.ulster.ac.uk.