Paper short abstract:

Based on Rheinberger's 'experimental systems', the presentation proposes an alternative space for knowledge in the imaginary, which impacts on the historicity of epistemic things in artistic research.

Paper long abstract:

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (1997) highlights the historical dimension of experimental science. Epistemic things are unknown entities that become - as knowledge is gained - technical objects; their epistemicity is depended on the possibility of future knowledge. Furthermore, the new technical objects impact on the conditions of future experimentation contributing to historical epistemology an aspect that is immanent to the experimental systems themselves.

While the materiality of experimentation may be shared between scientific and artistic research, the dependence on a future that characterizes experimental science's historicity - today often leading to a demand for 'innovation' - is less strong in artistic research. This is particularly the case when artistic research is seen through the lens of contemporary art as resultant from a critique on modern art's historicity that has conventionally been discussed in terms of the avant-garde, art's own historic mode of creating a future.

The proposed presentation seeks to engage with Rheinberger's 'experimental systems' in such a way as to retain their material, graphematic basis while seeking a new space for artistic articulations build around notions of contemporary art. As a consequence, epistemic things' epistemicity will become less dependent on future representational knowledge opening up a space for the imaginary. The presentation will argue that the historicity of artistic research - and with it, its epistemicity - is dependent on progressive articulations in the imaginary. While with Peter Osborne (2013), those articulations may be described as fictional, they enable the kind of 'virtual witnessing' (1984) that Stephen Shapin sees as important to the history of experimental science.