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.

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.