Knowledge production in contemporary art and artistic research are terms that have gained attention lately in Copenhagen. The two concepts are intimately intertwined in that, in my opinion, artistic research is an element of knowledge production. Artistic research is developed mainly from an institutional point of view in relation to practice-based PhDs, whereas knowledge production is wider referring to all the elements of knowledge production that take place within a contemporary art scene, thus also curatorial and academic practices. Well, over the course of 3-4 weeks during February and March this year we experienced 3 significant events about those two topics, which I will spend a bit of time running through in the following.
The first event was a seminar held in late February by UKK – Young Art Workers and BKF (union for artists) about artistic research at Overgaden – Institute for Contemporary Art. I co-organized and moderated the event in my role as co-director of UKK and also contributed to the editing process of a special issue for the BKF magazine about the topic in a Danish context. In that way, we had given a potential audience the chance to inform themselves, which was part of our plan as the topic is new in Denmark and as there are very different opinions
about it from fear to fascination. That the event gathered an eager crowd of maybe 80 artists, academics, curators, architects etc. of all ages was a great surprise. The programme was packed and we had organized it as an inaugural informative encounter primarily for the members of the two organizations. First, we had two presentations of artists doing artistic research PhDs, Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld at the University of Copenhagen and Frans Jacobi at Kunsthögskolan in Malmö. It helped to exemplify what artistic research can be. Next, we had invited Mikkel Bogh from the Royal Danish Acedmy of Fine Arts who has been working politically, practically and theoretically with knowledge production and artistic research over the past years trying to establish a political and educational environment in which to conduct practice-based PhDs for artists, especially through the scholarships from the Mads Øvlisen Stipendium. We talked about the new report from the Ministry of Culture in which leading figures in the creative educational field define artistic research. Mikkel Bogh could tell us that the Ministry of Culture recently has decided to open a research school for the creative and artistic educations in Denmark. It means that they want to develop a common research framework and eventually PhDs in these schools, something that will change the scope of creative and artistic educations in Denmark widely. Director of Malmö Kunsthögskolan Gertrud Sandquist was also invited, but had to cancel due to a broken arm. It was a petty, as her around 10 years of experience with practice-based PhDs at the Malmö Kunsthögskolan is valuable in a Danish and not so developed context. Luckily, it turned out that the public had more than enough of questions for Mikkel Bogh about the development and consequences of artistic research on an institutional level. We ended the session with the desire to organize a second edition, probably touching upon methods of artistic research and educational strategies. It might be next year..
Two weeks later Den Frie Udstillingsbygning held a seminar Knowledge Production Right Now inviting different artists to develop the concept from their own practice and thinking. The event was intense and what I found most interesting were Simon Starling’s method of serendipity, an investigation based on chance occurrences that unfold the research topic in hitherto unseen ways, and Ane Hjort Guttu’s video Freedom Requires Free People questioning learning and education through the eyes of an 8 year old kid. The final discussion, however, revealed a general confusion about what knowledge production is and it was never really defined during the seminar. It is good to leave the concept of knowledge production open, or, not to close the definition too much. Still, it is necessary to have some common ground to talk from and as there are quite a lot of actors working with the concept through diverse art practices in Denmark, I think we need to gather their different experiences and collectively create a definition that works in a Danish context.
To follow up on the problem of defining knowledge production I will do a small detour. A year ago, we were a group of PhD students who invited academics, artists and curators to create a network for artistic research. Surprisingly, about 30 people showed up to the first meeting even though it was not advertised widely. This forum could eventually be important in developing artistic research and knowledge production collectively and I hope it will experience initiative of organizing meetings in which such dialogues can take place. After all, if we are to have practice-based PhDs in Denmark, it would be great if the actors working with the topic already in their practice could be part of defining what artistic research should be in a Danish context.
Lately, about another two weeks after the event at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, the curator’s collective Kuratorisk Aktion launched an impressive monography about the artist Pia Arke, TUPILAKOSAURUS: An Incomplete(able)Survey of Pia Arke’s Artistic Work and Research, which emphasizes her especially ethnographically inspired reserach method. One of the main topics Pia Arke kept studying and developing was the relationship between Greenland and Denmark. It is a field of which there hasn’t been produced much knowledge and her artistic practice thus contributes importantly to a not only artistic, but also political, colonial and historical discussion in a productive way. The work of Kuratorisk Aktion is significant in that they have made Pia Arke’s work reach a wider public through exhibitions, books and seminars. All these threads, artistic research, development of new knowledge and dissemination of an artistic practice, ultimately can can change the collective cultural memory of a general public.
One of the next events about knowledge production that I would like to participate in will take place in New York in April; Critical Knowledge Production in Art, Science, Activism. It discusses the critical potential of knowledge production and the acknowledgement that knowledge production automatically, while being potentially critical, contributes to the development of late capitalism. Knowledge production is to me a complex concept; it is at once very intriguing in terms of incorporating art practices as active contributors to a political, academic, historical and social debate as well as very limiting in terms of schematization and utilization. I think that knowledge production in the arts reaches its greatest potential when developed within a free framework and not when developed within a framework where the outcome is predefined in order to fulfill the needs of academia or society. Hopefully, those two positions will productively challenge one another in the Danish debate and in the political and institutional decisions that will be made during the coming years.
Filed under: bla bla on writing and language, In the mood for, notes on cph, Santiago stories
8:06 AM Number 18. Kiss
“I’ll heat the seat” was the last sentence she said before he closed the door and she walked down the stairs, took the bike through the hipster area, along the lakes, along the lines, crossed the immigrant area, reached the posher one where she found the queue. On the way she had counted 2 persons with slightly darker skin. Here there was a queue of 17. The bell rang, it was 8 o’clock and a woman opened the door, gave them a number and a the COPENHAGEN post. They all sat down, facing the desks and the aquarium. And the sign with numbers. It was not lit yet, but next to it was another sign: EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES. While writing this sentence it moved from 009 to 011. And the office was not open yet. Only slowly getting full. One kid, having a soft drink. Others sitting in silence apart from the neighbouring guy talking on the phone. The only other blond in the room. Legs moving, up and down. Impatience.
8:07 AM :)2 kisses.
”Lad os ligeledes på dette sted fremhæve, at der under hans fobi er en umiskendelige fortrængning at [sic] disse to hos ham veludviklede komponenter af seksualaktiviteter. Han skammer sig over at urinere i andres påsyn, anklager sig selv for at røre ved tissemanden, anstrenger sig også for at opgive onanien og væmmes ved ‘pølse’, ‘tis’ og alt, hvad der minder derom. I fantasien om barneplejen tilbagekalder han denne sidste fortrængning.”[i]
8:40 AM The residency permit sales has begun :-B
“Good morning and welcome to the Danish Immigration service…In the Information Desk you can get information about passport and resident permit cards…On the digital newspaper you can get information about how to behave in the immigration centre…We give service to all applicants in order of numbers”
Why is it that even in an immigration office the voice over mimics a flight attendant explaining the safety instructions? “There are four exit doors, two on each side of the airplane equipped with slide rafts that automatically inflate. There are also four window exits over the wings equipped with evacuation slides. Each exit is marked with a sign overhead…To ensure your safety, your seatbelt should be fastened at all times when you’re seated…”[ii]
8:40 AM Buy 2 please.
“Wireless Network. While you are waiting you can use our wireless network – please contact Information for password and logon.”
She goes to the Information Desk, there is no information about internet and the queue is long. EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 043. Thursday seems to be a decent day. EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 044. “Syrian refugees receive Danish support” says the COPENHAGEN post on the neighbouring table. The telephone guy is gone and now there is an almost blond guy with glasses, short hair a brown sweater, jeans and brown leather shoes. He could look like a classical musician.
8:51 AM Now number 18. Waiting for you and number 35 @-}–
Well, they all seem friendly, the people behind the desk. Another kid. Sweet curls. Big eyes. Panorama. Up and down. Oh, a cup of black tea. EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 051. Yesterday, they paid 6.270 DKK for the green card residency permit application. It seems like…a lot.
8:56 AM phone call. “Am in front of the ice cream place, just to check so I don’t do it wrong. Should I go left towards where we lived before or right toward the centre? The ice cream place on the square? Go left, it will be on your left hand side. Before Føtex. OK. It went fast, no, from you came till number 18. Yes. Now it’s number 25 and we are number 35. OK. A kiss. And see you soon.”
Trying to sit straight. The pain in the shoulder and arm is climbing up on her from the right side. “Jamen, det står her. Det kan godt forlænges.” Sentences sneak out from the desk area.
They also have to fill out the form. It’s not there, in the folders on the wall, she can’t do it before him, before his arrival.
Today her ears are not scratching. Only the neck. Hair is down, even though it creates heat and increases the scratching underneath. “Questions can be answered at the Information Desk” EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 050. Now it’s number 31. 32. EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 047. Number 33.
“Learn Danish! Ballerup Sprogcenter.” And a smiling row of teeth. the COPENHAGEN post. “Refugees aided, rebels frustrated”. A hooded guy in a corner with a kalashnikof. the COPENHAGEN post. Now also teens are queueing for the Information Desk. Lip balm. Dry air. “Har du en kuglepen?” “Ja” “Må jeg låne een?” “Ja. Sort er nok bedst, ikke” How does the woman know she’s not Russian, like all the French and Chilean guys thought? “Foto og lydoptagelser forbudt” Number 35. “Tak ska du ha’” “Tak ska du ha’”. “Tryk! Udad, udad” Two happy faces leave the office. Number 36. No scandal. “Så du skal betale gebyrer?”
EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 054. “Så når du er i Danmark…”
A nice cup of tea. Maybe even a chai tea. With whipped cream. Cinnamon. Floffy milk. Oh. “PAS” “INFORMATION” “UDGANG/EXIT”
“…middelalderlige lærde brugte tegnet til at markere, hvor man skulle trække vejret i forbindelse med recitation.”[iii] Breath, breath, breath, breath, breath, breath, breath, breath, breath.
“Andersens Wank er en konceptuel bog, hvor skriften forholder sig mere til et koncept end til slutproduktet – altså hvor produktionsmåden er vigtigere end hvad der produceres.”[iv] It makes her wondering whether this text she is now writing is rather a sort of process writing, where the process is more important than the outcome. At least this is how she feels. To get something out of this time. Of this seat-heating, extended time. EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 063. Waiting for the call that says, hi, I’m on my way. Of getting the documents handed over and the temporary application-processing residency permit confirmed. Number 41. Third number passed, now jumping to 48, 56, 70, 82, 92. EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 065. There is a smell of ashtray, that smell that sometimes infiltrates the clothes of heavy smokers.
The neighbour with the brown sweater and the brown shoes leaves the office. Slight smile, slight relief? Slight disappointment? And a baby, coming out of the toilet. Hanging on her mother’s arm. Doors opening and closing with an empty metal sound. The sound of the next number in the queue, up-down, bim-bim.
These fish in the aquarium. Yellow, blue, black and grey. Counting. Stops, 50? 40? Too little space, too little water? Rocks and sound, air bubbles into the water, dividing the waiting area from the desk area. Breast feeding and a woman with weak legs. “Hvis du lige flytter den stol, der.” … “Det ser ikke så slemt ud.” … “Alt efter hva…….” … “Det er nummer 71…” EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 071. EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 072.
9:52 AM All fine? :-*
EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 074
.
.
9:55 AM Yes now leaving the copy place. Kiss.
Number 48…………….
.
.
“Last week, figures from Infomedia revealed that in 2006, at the peak of the Mohammed cartoon crisis, the national newspapers wrote an average of 14 articles a day on Islam and integration. Five years on and those figures have halved.” the COPENHAGEN post. EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 069
Her neighbours on the left side. “Jeg tror det er den her form vi skal udfylde. Jeg går lige op og spø’r. Du er asylansøger, ik’? Og dit pas udløber i juni. Ja, så er det godt at du får et nyt. Men jeg forstår ikke for her står der det udløb i 2004?”
“Nej, den er for børn, du skal tage den der nede.”
“Hvem ringer, Skat? It’s Nim. Hvem er Nim? I Don’t know.”
10:06 AM Ok. Now on my way to you. 3 kisses.
10:07 AM 3 kisses for the bike ride
.
.
Hot chocolate from the automate. Identical with the one they had at the folk school where she grew up. 4 years old. Playing in the hallways. Ping pong. Whirling around until getting dizzy. Falling. Automate hot chocolate. The best part was the foam. On top.
.
Tasteless.
.
.
EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 078
EXPECTED WAITING TIME IN MINUTES 079
.
.
[i] Freud, Sigmund &Place, Vanessa. ”Little Hans” in Andersens Wank. Århus: Edition After Hand, 2012, p. 90
[ii] http://airforces.fr/2010/12/02/flight-attendants-safety-instructions-with-script/
[iii] Place, Vanessa. Andersens Wank. Copenhagen: AfterHand, 2012, p. 97 (footnote)
[iv] Ibid. p. 94
Thanks to applicants and staff in The Danish Immigration Service, Thursday March 15.
Filed under: Beirut, bla bla on writing and language, konversationpieces, Kunst / Art, Lyd / Sound, notes on cph, texts, The Love Libration Movement
Texts, reading and writing came out to be the topic of October and November last year. First, in the workshop Verb Lists – Knowledge Done Again at the conference Mobilityshifts : International Future of Learning Summit at New School in New York and later, in a talk about Roles and Relations in Artistic Research at the ISCP International Studio & Curatorial Program, a talk which nevertheless morphed into a collective reading-writing session.
The workshop Verb Lists – Knowledge Done Again was developed from a symposium held in Copenhagen in June 2011 with the University of Copenhagen, Freïe Universität and Goldsmiths University of London, which I co-organized with Adam Drewes, Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Martin Glaz Serup and Trine Friis Sørensen. The symposium was called How to do things with academia and questioned traditional ways of organizing and performing academia. All participants submitted, instead of an abstract, a manual of how to do something differently with and in academia. Divided into 5 groups some 30 people worked intensively over a period of 3 days to create 5 collective manuals, which were printed and performed the last day.
In my group (consisting of Thorbjørn Becjman, Jürgen Bohm, Paola Crespi, Janis Jefferies, Trine Friis Sørensen and myself) we had DIY universities as our topic and somehow ended up creating a circular manual of “doing” as such inspired by Richard Serra’s Verb List from 1967-68. We literally read the verbs out loud, performed them, video recorded it and then asked others to interpret our movements thereby generating a new list of verbs. The new list of verbs was then performed, recorded, interpreted etc. creating a never ending manual translating verbs into action, actions into verbs and text into image, image into text.
The transformation of verbs to physical movements inspired Trine Friis Sørensen and I to translate the manual into the driving force of a workshop for the Mobilityshifts conference in October 2011 at the New School in New York. With a critical intention to question the discourse of the “educational turn”, which has influenced the European art scene the last decades, we decided to look at core texts from the discourse in terms of what verbs they use and thus what actions they ask us readers to perform. We were interested in asking if the sometimes abstract and idealistic theory, which we both are inspired of in our work, could be grounded and materialized in simply performing the verbs of the texts.
We chose to work with Jacques Ranciere’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, Irit Rogoff’s article “Turning”, Anton Vidokle’s “Exhibition as School: unitednationsplaza” and the text material from the Mobilityshifts conference itself. From these texts we chose central paragraphs and extracted the verbs into two verb lists. During the two hours we were scheduled to do the workshop we divided the participants into two groups, asked them to perform the verbs of one of the verb lists, recorded them doing it and swapped the videos for the other group to interpret their movements.
The reactions were many, some understood the concept without further questions and jumped easily into the exercise, others questioned everything. Roughly, some expected to learn a useful teaching method, others were happy staying with an open situation in which an experiment was being carried out and in which the means were more important than ends. Finally, we never really discussed the actual discourse of the “educational turn” (it was not clear how present this discourse was among the participants, we assumed that they were well informed as the conference material referred to initiatives considered part of it), but somehow we ended up performing it instead. To stay with the process and the means are key features of that discourse and this was what actually happened. One, who focused on the ends straight from the beginning and kept discussing what we were doing, was told by one of the others to “stop wanting to know everything beforehand”.
What we learnt from the workshop were two things. One, that on the one hand it takes something to make people go through a two hour session that is not focusing on results, but on the other hand that this situation carries a lot of potential. And two, that having had one more hour and having made the participants find the verbs themselves would have made the texts more present and the discussion of them potentially more open for realizations about the discourse.
One of the participants in the verb lists workshop was Mirene Arsanios, a friend and colleague who also participated in How to do things with academia and with whom I have been developing public reading and writing exercises during the past year. Being co-founder of 98weeks Project Space in Beirut she was invited by the ISCP to present 98weeks there during a one month residency. Mirene had asked me to do a talk with her and what we proposed was something about roles and relations in artistic research in relation to 98weeks. However, and more excited about trying out new ideas rather than cementing old ones, we decided to do an open and collective reading session to explore the mechanisms of reading desires and writing. Some 30 people gathered with the book they were reading at the moment and after a short introduction we sat reading in silence. Whenever one felt the urge to share some lines, one would go to the microphone and read out loud a paragraph. This was recorded and rules were simple. All the time one person had to be live archiving the event taking notes on a computer and one could swap books with another person, but then one had to go to two computers to take notes in a shared google document.
Unfortunately, we had to stop after an hour, because just at that moment the group found a rhythm, got hooked on writing and dived deep into the reading/writing experience. Afterward, while sharing the leftovers of the wine, we dreamt of doing this for hours on and on. With people coming and going, falling asleep, eating, smoking, drinking and sharing their often lonesome reading experience. There might be a chance we can do so in Copenhagen in March, if so, you are all invited.
Filed under: Beirut, bla bla on writing and language, konversationpieces, Kunst / Art, notes on cph, texts, The Love Libration Movement
A while ago it was a Saturday afternoon. We wanted to go reading in a café. It got late, like 6 or 7, and we ordered some food and beers. We were three people, J, M and I. J was commenting a paper and writing in the margin. M was reading a book she had gotten from another M. I was reading Nelly Richard, a masterpiece; Margenes e Instituciones. As the local families left the café the younger generation of cph hipsters started entering. M and I invented a reading/writing exercise where we took notes of each our books in the same notebook mixing minds and sudden reflections. As the night came closer and the café turned into a going out place I felt increasingly uncomfortable. As if reading, writing and thinking were not appreciated in this party-collective-social-happy setting. I told M, who got a bit offended and claimed that it was because I was not absorbed enough in what I was doing and that first of all she would not operate with a distinction between the intellectual and society. That was what I had done, I had questioned the role of the intellectual in public space. Because the feeling of not being wanted there resonated with the lack of intellectuals in public opinion, the lack of time to listen to reflections and the lack of people reading books in public space in Denmark. Experts investigating specialized areas are not that hot.
A couple of days later we met again and something had happened, she gave me some texts about the role of the intellectual and we continued the discussion. Somehow we decided to think more about it. Do readings in different places and reflect about the text, the place it was being read out loud and the relation between them.
We didn’t have the time to carry out the experiment. But some weeks later we met up in Beirut and wanted to do yet another project, a summer exorcism, a ghost dance on a platform in a wasteland in-between highways, rubbish and houses. We didn’t have the time to that either, but had nevertheless decided to do something there the following Saturday at twilight. It ended up being a reading/sleeping interaction, just for us and the passersby. M tried to fall asleep and I tried to make her do so while reading a sort of random collage of fragments of texts. We sat there for and hour and a bit more. She never really fell asleep, it was full of nature, mosquitos, bats and bushes. Only guys passed by us, I could hear their steps as they climbed the stairs, crossed the platform and walked down. They didn’t approach us or gave us comments. Not until afterwards, when we had finished and were leaving through a nearby street. A guy whose steps we recognized made the classic coquette noises and interpellated us into heterosexual women in the street. Apparently, before that we had been something else and had had a situation that was not to be entered. Both our Saturday night intellectual-interventions were in that sense exclusive, which I cannot clearly identify as a problem, a consequence or just a mere fact that does not mean that the intervention did not resonate with its surrounding.
Film: Terror’s Advocate
When: 04.08.2011
Where: Vesterbro, Copenhagen
Who: Marianne, Honey’s friend, Joachim, Agus, Cathrine, Iben, Arendse, Oscar, Tina, Frauke, Peter, Karina, Marie, Honey and I
Why: In one week two incidents marked me one way or another. Tuesday July 19 I went to a meeting in the reading group “After Evil. A Politics of Transitional Justice” in Beirut and Friday Jule 22 a bomb exploded in the centre of Oslo and the brutal massacre took place in the nearby island, Utøya.
For the reading group we had to watch the documentary Terror’s Advocate and read chapter two in Robert Meister’s book After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights. The film adresses the complexity of terrorism through the controversial character of the lawyer Jacques Verges, who since the 1960′s has defended, among others, terrorists/freedom fighters, Second World War nazi war criminals and African dictators. On the one hand, we see Verges act against European consensus in an anti-colonial gesture (the documentary focuses especially on his strong ties with the resistance in Algeria and the Palestinian cause), but on the other hand he never succumbs to one discourse; the cases he defends simply do not add up to one homogeneous ideology.
A third point that came up in the reading group was how Verges aestheticizes law. This becomes visible when he openly talks about how he used the court room as a stage, as his stage. Two things that he himself underlines is that every person has the right to be defended and that he does not like individuals to be humiliated by a group in majority. If that were the case with his enemy, he would probably even defend him/her.
The chapter of Meister discusses the concept of winning in justice-as-reconciliation processes, the role of pain in human rights discourses, the (revolutionary) before and (the human rights) after 1989, and the relationship between victim, perpetrator and beneficiaries, among many other things. One point that is particularly interesting in this context is the uneasiness the unreconciled victim creates; the victim, who does not accept the reconciliation process and continues to struggle, maybe violently, and thus becomes a thread to the surrounding reconciliation consensus. On the one side there is the global and institutional discourse of human rights and on the other side there is the thread of the possible agency of one person or a group when acting on their own means and not through established political channels.
——
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There do not seem to be many links between the incidents in Oslo and Utøya and the film + the chapter discussed above. However, there are some affinities in precisely the act of reacting with violence to a political situation you do not agree with. That is probably why we are so disgusted by the Norwegian case, because it shows the uncontrollable rage that exists impersonated in our society by some extremist persons and groups.
When I wanted to screen Terror’s Advocate in my house in the light of what happened in Norway it was because I missed a historical and reflexive level in the media coverage and debate. And thus I felt a need, within the momentum, to exchange with friends and colleagues about what had happened. But not directly, because that seemed to close the discussion in disgusted wonder of how one can show such detachment as to cold-bloodedly kill young people face to face. The discussion we had was quietly reflexive, probably weighted down by the ungraspable nature of the Norwegian case and history of repression, resistance and political/diplomatic relations between Europe and the Middle East that the film reminded us about. We didn’t by far reach a conclusion, apart from sharing the desire to discuss and reflect. This may be the pacifist agency we can show right now. And in the context of Denmark something we ought to show having elections coming soon.
Filed under: bla bla on writing and language, Kunst / Art, never written books - or telling titles, notes on cph, texts
It is with a humble, yet expressive felicity that I can announce I’ve been given the three year scholarship Mads Øvlisen Stipendie by Novo Nordisk Fonden to do a PhD at the University of Copenhagen. The project I proposed is entitled Når samtidskunsten producerer- ikke-videnskabelige videnskabsprocesser i produktionen af kulturel erindring (When Contemporary Art is producing – non-scientific processes of science in the production of cultural memory) and it will run from February 1 2011 till January 31 2014.
