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- Convenors:
-
Veerle Spronck
(HKU University of the Arts Utrecht)
Peter Peters (Maastricht University)
Denise Petzold (Maastricht University)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Combined Format Open Panel
- Location:
- NU-3B05
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 17 July, -, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Amsterdam
Short Abstract:
In transdisciplinary collaborations, the arts are often instrumentalized as “creative partners” rather than practices that can interrupt, slow down, and interrogate. This panel explores the practices of artists, designers, and artistic researchers to inspire STS to rethink the position of the arts.
Long Abstract:
Recently, transdisciplinary collaborations play an important role in research on societal transformations and processes. Examples are the rise of generative AI (Faisal, 2023) or issues of sustainability and climate change (Rödder, 2016). These transdisciplinary projects often promise to address societal challenges by creating more ‘robust’ and democratic knowledge, for example through alternative modes of knowledge production that bring researchers and societal actors together (Schikowitz, 2020). Given the range of scholarly disciplines and (societal) stakeholders involved, however, tensions, difficulties, and conflicts are inevitable (Felt, Igelsböck, Schikowitz, & Völker, 2016). While scholars in Science and Technology Studies (STS) can explain how these problems emerge and play out, the aim of synthesizing different bodies of knowledge and solving such conflicts and tensions remains.
In such transdisciplinary collaborations, the arts are often seen as “creative partners” for cooperation. They are for example expected to facilitate the communication between societal stakeholders, or act as vehicles for social critique or commentary. In this panel, we propose to see the arts not as “instrument” or “creative solution-producer". Rather, we ask how the arts can inspire transdisciplinary practice, proposing that the arts are at the core of the very societal transitions that transdisciplinary collaborations seek to address. We re-attend to the arts as practices that can interrupt, distract, deviate, slow down, create discomfort, interrogate, problematise, and confront. By doing so, we critically address the conflict-solving approach that STS scholars have attached to transdisciplinary projects.
In this combined open panel, we therefore not only invite papers, we explicitly invite artists, (social) designers, musicians, writers, and artistic researchers to share their proposals for workshops, experiments, prototypes, performances, or other artistic inventions too. Together, we aim to explore methods, ways of attending, and collaborative work practices that can inspire STS researchers to rethink the position of the arts in transdisciplinary projects.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 17 July, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
An exercise in joyful mutual instrumentalisation brought to you by pop art-philosopho-geographers. Participants vocalise their frustrations and joys of using each other for research and art, enjoying the positive frictions of challenging hierarchy and entitlements in non-disciplinary collaboration.
Paper long abstract:
What is your most intimate experience with being instrumentalised, for art and/or science?
The experience of being used for someone else’s purposes or projects cuts across the arts and sciences. Looping around, instrumentalisation is non-directional and multidirectional, humanists instrumentalised by scientists as ethics or RRI consultants, instrumentalised by artists when building new art works, instrumentalised by social scientists to create cultural impacts, instrumentalised by… But is instrumentalisation really so bad? Or does it actually allow for non-disciplinary collaboration in the time of polycrises? After all, one can consent to being used.
This intervention finds the rhythm in the loop, the beat in the feedback of recurring frustrations, the non-disciplinary chorus in the disciplinary jargon. Brought to you by pop star artist-philosopher-geographers, this participatory performance lecture gets you to vocalise frustrations, and joys of sampling each other for research and art (using the public to sequence real-time ideas into a polycritical cacophonic synthesis). Crashing the logocentric model of the argument, this occasion compels mutual instrumentalisation by side-chaining non-disciplinary collaboration, positive friction, rhythm and joy.
Instrumentalise Me! is a demo of a joyful mutual instrumentalisation choir. We explore the ethics of collaboration and participation proposing that we cannot do transdisciplinarity without mutual instrumentalisation; but instrumentalisation - especially when somehow mutual - is not all that bad - it can generate harmony and dissonance, through the positive frictions of rubbing against hierarchies, egos and entitlements.
Paper short abstract:
The workshop explores designers' responsibility in the AI era, emphasising the transformative role of the arts in societal transitions through iterative, collaborative, and sensory-based activities. Aims to enrich dialogues on ethics in/of/for design in an STS context.
Paper long abstract:
The ‘Designing with Uncertainty: Co-creative event’ reimagines design practices in the context of digital automation and AI, by positioning design practices as pivotal for societal transitions. This workshop fosters critical reflection on ethical implications of integrating digital technologies in design, advocating a nuanced understanding of designers’ responsibilities.
Rooted in my doctoral research, this workshop confronts ethical challenges of opaque AI, promoting design ethics as an invitation to care. It leverages 'response-ability' (Haraway, 2016) to explore designers’ accountability, intertwining emergent knowing (Manning, 2016) with Walker's (2007) expressive-collaborative framework to redefine responsibility in design.
Structured as an exploratory journey, it involves iterative, collaborative, and sensory-based activities: from performative reading to a collective walk for material gathering and scored aesthetic encounters delving into the concept of responsibility. These explorations facilitate emergence, reflection, and engagement with critical themes of vulnerability and dependency.
Previously held in art/design contexts, this workshop's introduction to an STS setting aims to deepen transdisciplinary understandings, inspiring actionable strategies for ethical engagement and emphasizing the transformative potential of arts in ethical discourse. This venture into a new setting is expected to stimulate dialogue that enriches responsible design practices, underscoring the critical role of the arts in shaping our shared technological futures.
Paper short abstract:
The study explores how sensory and arts-based approaches can strengthen human-nature connectedness (HNC) and consequently inspire local sustainable food practices while fostering environmental awareness and inner connections to sustainability.
Paper long abstract:
Increasing society’s disconnection from nature, both on individual and collective levels, is often defined as a root cause for unsustainability and environmental crises. This in turn affects food consumption practices and one’s understanding of food supply chains and systems. To restore human-nature connectedness (HNC) many studies focus on quantitative approaches further encouraging ‘emotional ignorance’ known as a ‘knowing- feeling’ gap. By integrating sensory ethnography and arts-based interventions, this study reveals how engaging with art and one’s senses can deepen one’s understanding of and connection to a local landscape and its biodiversity, leading to more environmentally friendly food practices.
The core aim of our case study research was to deepen the understanding of place-based food practices in Biella (Italy) in relation to existing local artistic expressions, such as pottery. To cultivate awareness on sustainable local food practices this study focuses on exploring ‘embodied being in’ and ‘embodied understanding of’ one’s natural environment. This dynamic relationship was explored through an integrated research design built on an arts-based intervention. The framework of the intervention inherently considers arts and cultural practices to be embedded within a place-based food culture and agricultural context, reflecting the panel's interest in discussing arts not as a mere tool for problem-solving but as an integral to societal transitions and environmental engagement.
As we navigate the complexities of transitions towards sustainability, our study advocates for a re-envisioned role of the arts—beyond instruments of climate change communication or critique—to core elements that inspire transdisciplinary collaborations and artful sustainability outlook.
Paper short abstract:
An empirical paper comparing four experiences with theatre-based participatory processes in Drama Labs. In each case. We explore how theatre might help us understand the role of different, potentially conflicting perspectives in transdisciplinary collaborations for urban transformations.
Paper long abstract:
This paper addresses the prevailing critique on consensus-seeking approaches in urban development and planning, and the traction gained by proponents of a so-called agonistic urban planning. This approach to planning might better accommodate differences and disagreements to ensure a more inclusive participatory politics and transdisciplinary collaborations (see Fainstein, 2010; Healey, 2003; Hillier, 2003; Metzger, 2017; Huxley & Yiftachel, 2000; Legacy et al. 2014; Pløger, 2022). Agonistic planning is, however, critiqued for a large gap between its practice and its theoretical approaches, and there is little work done that practically and empirically addresses how the nature of the conflict between different social actors can be identified, expressed, and negotiated in participatory planning processes. In response, this paper explores how drama labs, by means of theatre-based methods, can put agonistic planning into practice.
We compare experiences from four drama labs: participatory processes that were developed through art-research collaborations using theatre-based methods around urban climate-related conflicts. These drama labs were executed in Drammen (Norway), Gdynia (Poland), Tilburg (the Netherlands) and Genk (Belgium) – each with a unique approach and set-up, based on intensive research in the respective areas. We explore how developing such drama labs can be understood as institutionalizing arenas for productive conflict. We investigate whether drama labs can increase the transformative capacity of cities, by providing participatory processes that better accommodate and handle the presence of conflicts. This paper demonstrates how theatre might help us understand the role of different, potentially conflicting perspectives in transdisciplinary collaborations for inclusive urban transformations.
Paper short abstract:
The emergence of artistic and design-driven methodologies allows for tackling issues of industrial heritage at the intersection of spatial and cultural practices. Method assemblages of video vignettes and hand drawings promise to mend lacunas in the discourse on transformation and reuse.
Paper long abstract:
Design-driven research into the potential for maintenance and transformation of post-socialist industrial architecture in Romania has uncovered that the central problem that needed to be addressed lay not within spatial issues but constituted a cultural crisis:
As cultural amnesia became enforced by post-communist Romanian institutional culture (Wicke, 2018, p. 126), valuable industrial heritage sites were threatened with erasure, along with an essential part of Romanian collective memory. It became evident that architectural research into the topic required developing novel methodological toolsets that allowed explorations rooted in design and could tackle hybrid cultural issues.
The missing method lay in an artistic design-oriented approach that would mediate between representation and architectural intervention strategy, and that could embody a “shift of the gaze” (Ranciere, 2005, p. 13-25) onto industrial heritage sites, by showing modes of reflection and possibilities for further action.
The process evolved into an assemblage of methods and uncovered a new methodology: phenomenographic (Troiani, 2020, p. 247) video vignettes of multiple case study sites that illustrated analysis and exploration practices, design proposals, and narrative context through the overlap of video, hand drawings, and annotated sketches. This experimental artistic process, relying on the making explicit of auto-ethnographic tacit knowledge, has uncovered how “spatial and representational expertise from architecture could be applied in other disciplines” (Von Ballestrem, 2023, p. 111).
This contribution to the “Making and Doing Transformations” aims to showcase and explore how artistic design-driven research can mend lacunas in architectural discourse and offer solutions for rescuing fragile urban heritage sites.
Paper short abstract:
A workshop series convening a diverse group of designers, artists, Indigenous knowledge keepers and scientists used embodied, story-sharing approaches that embraced slowness, and ambiguity to interrogate and confront boundaries that exist between fields of expertise and lived experience.
Paper long abstract:
Designers and artists are often privileged to work with like-minded individuals in other disciplines with the intent to enable responsible engagement and care of our environment. This type of collective work involves acknowledging the ecological imperative to change current unsustainable behaviours and requires new approaches to collectively address the climate crisis. Seeking to find ways to develop relevant transdisciplinary collaborations, a participatory workshop series titled WITH Trees: The New? Material! Relations. Project was conducted, in Spring 2023. The project convened a diverse group of designers, artists, Indigenous knowledge keepers and scientists with the intent to identify new strategies and decolonizing approaches for working with biobased materials as alternatives to petroleum, in particular biomass (cellulose fibres) from the forest. Comprised of making/thinking/discussion activities, embodied approaches embraced slowness, and ambiguity to help interrogate, and confront boundaries that exist between fields of expertise and lived experience. The gatherings stimulated and captured expansive, iterative local collective sharing and envisaging related to our relationship with and use of biomass (cellulose fibres) from the forest. This paper shares approaches taken by the WITH Trees research team based out of a material focused design research lab within a Canadian art and design institution that has increasingly considered and sought ways of validating multiple and alternate histories (and presents, and futures) connected to material, practice-based research. Story-sharing Assemblages made up of made-material objects and language outputs (encompassing visual, tactile embodied, spoken and written modes of communication) that were applied in the WITH Trees workshops will be discussed.
Paper short abstract:
Performance lecture/ workshop attempts to generate a prompt with participants to disrupt authorship and identity. We will create one identity across multiple inputs of experiences, backgrounds, and races, to be visible and invisible to the system of computation using Google Deep Dream and Chat GPT.
Paper long abstract:
Elly Clarke and Clareese Hill are Artist Researchers and collaborators thinking about how to disrupt the problematic notion of authorship. They have written collaborative texts merging identities to establish a new narrative of entangled identities from desperate ontological experiences. The performance lecture seeks to generate a prompt with participants to disrupt authorship and identity. Together with the participants, they’ll create one identity across multiple inputs of experiences, backgrounds, and races, to be visible and invisible to the system of computational surveillance. The core of the workshop will be to collaboratively generate a series of prompts across Google Deep Dream and Chat GPT to create a real and fictive assemblage identity via an image and a long biography. During the first half of the workshop, Clarke and Hill will deliver a performance lecture to unpack the notion of aliases and alter egos and how they relate to surveillance capitalism through sousveillance various methods of data collection. Both Clarke and Hill will troll their alter ego for strategies for operating in liminal spaces, under raiders, and out of the gaze of technological big brothers. We will also unpack the poetics of prompt generating for survival and opacity. The second half of the workshop will activate the skills and ideas just learned to troubleshoot the role of the algorithm’s reductive determination to create a new collaborative identity through prompt generation. The new identity will offer a speculative rest bit from the drag of identity performativity experienced in the terrestrial plane.
Paper short abstract:
In this contribution we share insights from a participatory artistic project with and about AI. We focus on the need for facilitating co-creation processes with care and intention to hold space for the vulnerability and equality needed for transdisciplinary interventions to be transformative.
Paper long abstract:
In this contribution we share and reflect on insights from the project “The value of art in artificial intelligence,” as well as more broadly on learnings from the participatory and artistic practices we have been involved in as artist collective and as researcher. We focus on the importance of developing a process of facilitation that allows for a collaboration based on equality. We have found it crucial that all participants are equally out of their comfort zone to be moved and learn from the project. Indeed, artists and artistic approaches have been shown effective in inspiring people to question and challenge dominant ways of working, perceptions, and norms (Berthoin Antal, 2015). Our experience learns that to create a space in which people are open and able to learn from the “other”, whether this is another person, discipline, or technology, we need to carefully design and guide the process.
In the case of learning about and from AI, which was central in the project “The value of art in artificial intelligence,” this also entailed considering differing levels of expertise and experience, as well as the biased nature of AI itself which can both impact the level of equality in the collaborations. Ultimately, we address not whether, but how art as creative partner can play a role in transdisciplinary projects and what conditions of the collaborations are needed for such projects to be transformative, acknowledging that vulnerability is required on the part of participants.
Paper short abstract:
The Leuphana Concert Lab is a transdisciplinary teaching & learning project at Leuphana University. Students and researchers from all faculties co-creatively develop projects with musicians from both Global North and Global South to address Global Challenges from a transdisciplinary perspective.
Paper long abstract:
The Leuphana Concert Lab is a transdisciplinary teaching & learning project at Leuphana University cooperating with scientific and artistic partners. Students and researchers from all faculties co-creatively develop projects with musicians from both Global North and Global South to address Global Challenges from a transdisciplinary perspective. It pursues the goal of encouraging students from all faculties to reflect on socially relevant topics through the medium of classical music and to bring them to the region.
We are especially interested how to integrate the topic of “What role for the arts in transdisciplinary collaborations” on the level of teaching and learning and are currently developing several modules for the complementary study programme. These seminar offers always bring together students and teachers from different study backgrounds with musicians. They center on one specific topic per semester (e.g. Societal Cohesion) and discuss disciplinary approaches and the specific potential of the Arts in both addressing and translating those topics for an audience.
Several seminars and concert activities with different artists have been implemented since the project started in 2023. Our accompanying research investigates how sense-making and sense-giving processes occur between the students, artists, and the audience. At the conference in Amsterdam, we would like to present the first research results, and discuss ways of aligning artists, researchers, and students to approach today’s Grand Challenges.
Paper short abstract:
This classical music performance becomes a journey through the forest, like a tale supported by interdisciplinary tools, such as a narrator, projected images and electronic sounds. The audience will forget the usual expectations of classical music and will rediscover the music itself again.
Paper long abstract:
Old-fashioned, distant, difficult… This is the typical perception of classical music nowadays. Even the music written in our frenetic century, our contemporary music, struggles to find opportunities in concert programs because the audience, and even musicians, consider it incomprehensible and not beautiful anymore. How can modern musicians deliver the true essence of music? How can they create accessible, enjoyable and surprising performances?
The Wonders of the Forest is a musical performance that allows the audience to engage again with classical music thanks to its focus on the powerful artistic concept of the performance: giving priority to the theme and supporting it with innovative performance elements, such as storytelling, visuals and electronic sounds.
The structure of the performance is a tale through the forest, a journey to discover oneself across nature, sound and time. It has a unique repertoire selection, including cutting-edge contemporary pieces with electronics (synchronization of specially recorded tracks with piano live performance), original script and image design made by the pianist of the project, and live narration of the story.
The listeners will smoothly follow this beautiful allegoric story of transformation with impactful and unforgettable moments, such as the birds in the forest, the bells or the rain tree. But at the same time, subtly and unconsciously, they will experience a journey through more than a century of classical music, from late romanticism to the exciting 21st century, while listening to contemporary music without pressure or prejudices.