The publication On Not Knowing: How Artists Think will draw together a number of
contemporary thinkers from a range of disciplines along with artists to explore
the place of ‘not knowing’ within the creative process. It is
conceived as an examination of the subject through practice and theory and will
include both written essays and artists’ projects. The state of ‘not knowing’ or engaging with the unknown
is a clearly acknowledged important aspect of all research. For artists it
is crucial, as during the making process they may move between a strong sense
of direction and a more playful or meditative state of exploration and
experimentation. Within this process a sense of not knowing what it is
they are doing can be as important as clear intentions. The book will
examine states such as ignorance, wonder, awe, potential and recognizing the
new, as well as reflect on how artists formulate strategies of not knowing and
‘play’ within their decision making process. Contributors
include Professor Gary Peters (York St John), Associate Professor Rachel Jones
(George Mason), Associate Prof Neal White (Bournemouth) and Dr Jyrki
Siukonen (Finnish Academy) as well as artists Cornford and Cross,
Sonia Boyce, Ian Kiaer and Phyllida Barlow. The publication builds on a symposium held at the
invitation of Kettle’s Yard, to accompany the exhibition Material Intelligence
in 2009.
For my contribution to On Not Knowing: How Artists Think I am envisaging a creative prose text that elaborates and reflects on a series of propositional practices or tactics for producing the conditions of not knowing. Excavating ideas from some of my recent research and practice, I want to explore how the state of ‘not knowing’ or the practice of engaging with the unknown is an important aspect of all research, but is also one that might often need to be actively courted, conjured or produced. I am interested in methods (tactics even) that attempt to set up the conditions of not knowing or which actively attempt to stall or suspend the moment of knowing, of decision, or the fixing of things into form or thought. I anticipate that the text will consist of a series of episodes or sections that elaborate and reflect on a different practice or tactic for producing the conditions of not knowing.
For my contribution to On Not Knowing: How Artists Think I am envisaging a creative prose text that elaborates and reflects on a series of propositional practices or tactics for producing the conditions of not knowing. Excavating ideas from some of my recent research and practice, I want to explore how the state of ‘not knowing’ or the practice of engaging with the unknown is an important aspect of all research, but is also one that might often need to be actively courted, conjured or produced. I am interested in methods (tactics even) that attempt to set up the conditions of not knowing or which actively attempt to stall or suspend the moment of knowing, of decision, or the fixing of things into form or thought. I anticipate that the text will consist of a series of episodes or sections that elaborate and reflect on a different practice or tactic for producing the conditions of not knowing.
These might include:
* Ideas
relating to the desire to be led astray – wandering, errancy, getting lost,
misdirection, the principle of the maguffin
* Tactics for encountering the unclassified – ways of producing an encounter with that which is beyond the comprehensible, a move towards opacity and the ‘incomprehensible wild’.
* Tactics for encountering the unclassified – ways of producing an encounter with that which is beyond the comprehensible, a move towards opacity and the ‘incomprehensible wild’.
*
Practicing the fall from knowing: surrendering to the fall & the not knowing
of syncope.
* The
conjectural: tactics for distancing the ‘if’ and ‘then’.
* Chance
and the paradoxical ‘not knowing’ within rule-based operations; the giving over
of agency in order to be surprised.
* The fragmented
and fragmentary as states of not knowing
* Techné - between cunning (metis) and
opportunity (kairos): improvising tactics for navigating the not yet known.