Danica Maier and I presented a version of the publication No Telos, as part of the Lost Bergen Conference Relic Site, within the frame of the SAR conference Dare Care Share.
Our original abstract: No Telos: Tactics of Affirmative Uncertainty
How can artistic research operate alternatively to the language of capitalism, sports and warfare (modeled on economic efficiency/gain, competition/success, target-hitting/strategic machination)? How can artistic research practices that are non-teleological, atelic or autotelic intervene in and unsettle the outcome-motivated and achievement-driven tendencies of contemporary culture, by cultivating shared practices of experiential becoming and collective being-doing?
Reflecting on No Telos (2016>) — a project exploring the critical role of uncertainty, disorientation and not knowing within artistic research-practice —we ask: How can we shift emphasis from goal-oriented productivity towards experimental forms of process-led exploration, subversive playfulness and wilful irresolution? Can we differentiate affirming and debilitating forms of uncertainty and open-endedness, between a not knowing that vectors towards generative exploration and that which paralyses, creates stasis? What role has the practising of creative uncertainty within the uncertain conditions of contemporary life? Towards an ethics of uncertainty — how can an encounter with the unfamiliar and strange(r) operate as a micro-political, ethico-aesthetic practice? The rhetoric of art practice, pedagogy and research often foregrounds not knowing, uncertainty and getting lost — yet how can such principles be taught or practised?
Against the strategic power dynamics of institutionalised research, No Telos embraces Michel de Certeau’s advocacy of everyday ‘tactics’ that invigorate the experiential quality of life lived — aesthetic practices of reading, looking, walking, talking, eating, being-with. Invoking the Latin etymology of ‘mirror’ — mirare: to observe, contemplate, look at, wonder — we ask: How can artistic research not only mirror back (reflect, reveal) the conditions of life as-is, but also reactivate our critical curiosity (Freire), re-engage our capacity for collective attention and imagination?
Our presentation can be found here:
Context: The Crisis Collective! 11th SAR International Conference on Artistic Research, Bergen 2020 had to be cancelled due to the pandemic. The conference organisers – SAR and the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at University of Bergen (KMD, UiB) – have created a relic site and a time capsule to it here at the 2021 SAR conference Vienna and into the future. We approached all participants to take initiative and speculate on the past of a future that couldn’t happen – receiving a spectacular response by more than 30 contributors. Together we show care for the momentum of the past creative acts and research – longingly fragmented and cryptic as they may be – and give that imminent yet suspended resonance a voice.
Inauguration
The Lost Bergen Conference Relic Site was officially inaugurated in the Lost Bergen Conference “Suspended Absence” discussion room on 8th April, 2:30pm, (digital) Fanny Hensel Hall Discussion on “Suspended Absence”. The Lost Bergen Conference Relic Site harbours the finished and the fragmented, unfinished work to be explored by peers and public. Audio-visual recordings, images, texts, references, etc., appear in their original form or with adaptations the authors choose to make in the light of the past year, including statements and reflections on what has changed. The website is now published as a lasting issue on the Research Catalogue.
Encounter the Lost Bergen Conference Relic Site here