(foto David Dickson)

söndag 26 december 2010

ART: Studying Artistic Creation

Thinking about clothes as performance (March 2009, photo DD)







I am reading a dissertation.
Dissertations are dangerous. Oftentimes they are dangerous to those who write them. From my own experience I know that if you want to communicate something, the dissertation form in itself can be an obstacle to that communication ever taking place.

I am in the process of reading a dissertation by a scholar who studies art as ”engagement in public space” (Concrete Fashion 11) and who professedly does ”not want to objectify what happened and lose the quality of the lived experience” (21).

In the dissertation genre, to say this is a contradiction in kind. In adopting the aims and methods of scientific research as generally accepted, the scholar by definition makes the lived experience his or her object of study. This is a procedure in which the quality of ”lived experience” has to be abandoned. Moreover, in accepting the rules and regulations of academic dissertation writing, the engagement in public space is drastically minimized. More often than not, dissertations are read only by the opponents.

However, I am in the process of reading a dissertation. Kajsa G. Eriksson studies fashion. She studies clothes as modes of intervention in public space and as modes of negotiating identity. She enacts these interventions by means of performance art. In studying her own enactments, she says ”I attempt to understand in what way my actions and interventions can contribute to new knowledge about what we have to accept as given, and what we are able to change ...” (28).

In her performances, Eriksson unwaveringly intervenes in everyday public space. In doing so she ”provokes reactions and social responses between people who have never met before”, and this, she says, is important to her understanding of the potentials of art, since it ”shows how public space is open to new formations of people sharing something they would not otherwise have shared ...” (94).

Thinking about clothes as social intervention (March 2006, photo DD)

I have not seen or taken part in any of Eriksson’s performance interventions in real life. A recent event from life, however - from my own life - exemplifies how close to lived experience Eriksson is in her dissertation, at the same time as it demonstrates how precarious is her definition of her interventions as art (this is something that she readily acknowledges, and I will return to that).

 Earlier this autumn I attended a seminar arranged in Stockholm by the Swedish Council of Science about the connections found by present brain-research between the brains of creative people and those of schizophrenics. I have written about this seminar elsewhere on this blog. I attended the seminar in the company of two colleagues from the school where I work - two colleagues with whom I have many interests in common. Professionally we are intensely engaged in the development of aesthetic education and privately we sing together in a choir. The seminar we attended was a highly interesting and inspiring one.

After the seminar and in leaving the location, my colleagues and I were filled to the brim with ideas new and old, and on our way to the T-station, we talked happily and inspiredly about the impressions of the day. We had a twenty-minute journey to Bromma ahead of us to pick up our car there and then the long drive from Stockholm to Bengtsfors some 400 kilometers away.

This was a Thursday afternoon and the train was quite filled with travellers. We found three free seats, however, cramming ourselves in among the Thursday afternoon commuters. Not thinking particularly of where we were, we continued our discussions. We were not altogether agreed about what it means for us as teachers that young people with brains tending towards divergent thinking need a generous and tolerant social environment in order to develop their creativity in benign directions. So somewhat intensely and with slightly raised voices we carried on. What does generous and tolerant signify, and didn’t one of the lecturers at the seminar also mention the need of disciplined work ethics in combination with tolerance vis-à-vis divergence.

Without our actively thinking about it, we couldn’t help sensing that some change was taking place in the carriage. A woman opposite me across the aisle caught my gaze, nodding in sympathy with something I said. Two men, possibly but not obviously acquainted with one another, started discussing, broken utterances about school and education reaching my ear. A man sitting close enough to join us took up a thread with my female colleague while my male colleague and I continued where we were. Soon enough we reached our destination. On our way out we were joined by the man who had been talking with my female colleague, and what was now a conversation about other everyday occurrences continued until he had to go his way and we ours.

This social event was not a performance, but it raises questions about performance art.  It was not intended as a performance intervention. In all other respects, however, it complied with what Eriksson thinks of as performance art. It functioned as an engagement in public space, It ”provoke[d] reactions and social responses between people who have never met before” and it ”show[ed] how public space is open to new formations of people sharing something they would not otherwise have shared ...”. And as I, much like Eriksson, ”attempt to understand in what way [this intervention] can contribute to new knowledge about what we have to accept as given, and what we are able to change”, I can come to think of a number of prejudices and given preunderstandings about the strúcture of life in Stockholm, about the way Swedish people act in trains and buses, and about the general social reticence that is expected of Swedes. So a pertinent question is: what makes a social event a work of art?

In the process of reading Kajsa G Eriksson’s dissertation, I begin to suspect that the academic form of the dissertation is in conflict with the depth of her research. Eriksson wants to study the whole of the process of performance artmaking and she wants to use a method where she is herself involved in the process she studies. A study of this kind requires a double perspective including introspection as well as ordinary social observation - and this is a point where the form of her dissertation fails her.

All through her dissertation Eriksson repeatedly pronounces her conviction that what she tries to do requires this other kind of scientific approach, but all the time this is held back by the fact that dissertations require a standardized approach of ordinary science. This requirement is quite probably a result of the current efforts of the departments of art to gain scientific status within the universities.

Whatever the reason, Eriksson never fully answers the question ‘what makes a social event a work of art’. She acknowledges the omission in an interesting way as a ”dilemma” that is ”not fully elaborated” in her dissertation:

”As an artist, one works for fun ... it is one of the privileges of being an artist. Something will be produced in the process of art making, even if only a change of the inner state of the artist. The dilemma arises in the sharing of the art ...”  (69)

Here, things begin to happen. Questions arise - questions which, if answered, may very well lead on to crucial knowledge about the processes of art making. So, firstly, what does the word ”fun” signify? And, secondly, if part of the product of the process of art making is a change in the inner state of the artist - what is the relation between this change and that part of the product that could be called the artifact? And finally the sharing of the art - what do artists want to share, and with what aims do artists want to share their work?

I am reading this dissertation.
Dissertations are dangerous. Oftentimes they are dangerous to those who write them. If you want to communicate something, the dissertation form in itself can be an obstacle to that communication ever taking place. In the process of reading I can try to overcome that obstacle, and the best I can do for now is tell a story and ask some questions.

Engaging in public space (March 2006, photo DD)

Note:
The pictures in this blog installment have no connection to Kajsa G. Eriksson's dissertation or to any of her projects. They illustrate my own thoughts about performance art. (DD)

Source for this article:
Eriksson, Kajsa G.  Concrete Fashion: Dress, Art and Engagement in Public Space. Diss. HDK, School of Design and Crafts, Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.  Göteborg: Art Monitor 2009.

See Kajsa G Eriksson's own documentation of her work here

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Read more here about the current efforts of the departments of art to gain scientific status within the Swedish universities - ”Science for Profession” is a motto under which the University College of Borås is linking scientific theory with practical knowledge in the fields of art and crafts.

Also read the ’Science for Profession’ reports 1 - 7 about the realization of the project in which the University College of Borås is linking scientific theory with practical knowledge in the fields of art and crafts (the reports are in Swedish).

tisdag 14 december 2010

What Comes Naturally: newyorker.com

A namesake. 

Unbeknownst to me until today,  Louis Menand published an article in The New Yorker on 25 November 2002 with a title that would - eight years later - be the title of my blog. Menand's article brings up a critical view of behavioral genetics and its conservative cultural politics, asking the question "Does evolution explain who we are?"

 Read Louis Menand's article:
What Comes Naturally: newyorker.com

See my blog article where I ask some questions about ADHD and its genetic explanations (in Swedish)

See also Louis Menand's fan page "The Essential Menand":
http://www.louismenand.org/

måndag 6 december 2010

FILOSOFI: "Andrum från kunskapen"

Jag hittar något hos filosofen Ralph Waldo Emerson som kanske anknyter till just "andrum från kunskapen" som vi diskuterade häromdan här:

"Expression is all we want ... Not knowledge, but vent: we know enough; but have not leaves & lungs enough for a healthy perspiration & growth"

Detta citeras i en artikel i The New York Review of Books, 28 oktober 2010, av Robert Pogue Harrison. 

Kunskap har vi nog av - vad vi behöver är "luft".

"Vent" är ett ord som förekommer mest i uttryck som "give vent to" - att "ge luft åt" känslor, obekväma tankar, vrede eller temperament.

Vad vi behöver är luft att uttrycka oss. "Andrum från kunskapen" - och luft att växa.


Läs inledningen till Harrisons artikel "Emerson: the Good Hours" 
Läs hela artikeln som HTML.


Tuktade. Växande.  Allé, Baldersnäs (foto DD)

söndag 5 december 2010

LIVET / FILOSOFI: "den inre kompassen"

Utsiktspunkt I. Bautasten, Stafsinge (foto DD)
 2010 12 05
 Hur kan jag vara mig själv? Det frågade jag mig i ett blogginlägg nyligen. Spirea tog upp frågan och pekade på behovet av att ”hitta andrum från kunskapen”. Jag bejakade detta och ville mena att ”den inre kompassen” då skulle vara en kompetens att använda för att till exempel kunna göra sina egna val.

Att tala om ”mig själv” som en utgångspunkt för beslut och handling i livet är kanske inte helt självklart. På den tiden jag var som mest aktiv i mina akademiska studier (1987 - 97) var det problematiskt att påstå att mitt jag hade något slags centrum eller kärna som var bara jag och varifrån något man skulle kunna kalla genuint eller äkta skulle utgå. I postmodern eller poststrukturalistisk tolkning var det istället självklart att mitt själv var ett pussel av sociala intryck eller en mötesplats för sociala impulser. Det som jag uppfattade som mitt ”själv” sågs som en kombination av alla de intryck min hjärna samlat på sig - sinnesintryck, egna erfarenheter, men också de sätt att tolka och förstå, som min sociala omgivning stått för.

Denna syn på mig själv stämde bra med vad jag själv upplevt - att jag som person har många sidor, många möjliga sätt att vara mig själv, och att det som är jag i mångt och mycket kommer till som ett resultat av social påverkan.

Visst, det stämde bra att mitt jag är en mötesplats för sociala impulser som kommer till mig utifrån, men det var något som inte stämde. I den jaguppfattningen fanns ingen plats för något som var ”bara jag”. Ingen plats för beslut och handlingar som är ”genuint” mina egna. Hela mitt jag skulle vara en produkt av de kulturer jag lever i, av de normer jag gnuggas mot, av de idéströmningar och av den tidsanda som omger mig. Det fanns ingen plats för någon inifrån kommande impuls som kunde styra mina val i detta virrvarr av impulser - det fanns ingen plats för ”den inre kompassens kompetens” som skulle kunna göra det möjligt att välja en egen väg.

Men finns det då någon ”inre kompass”? Finns det någon del av mitt jag som bara har sitt ursprung inne i mig själv?

Jag frågade min syster Cecilia som är troende, och hon svarade Gud. Jag tittade på Nietzsche, och han menade att Gud är ytterligare en auktoritet utanför mig själv. En skadlig auktoritet, som avleder mig från att lita på mina inifrån kommande impulser. Jag läste den amerikanske filosofen Emerson, som var en av Niezsches inspirationskällor. Här anades en jagsyn som föregrep den postmoderna kalejdoskopuppfattningen med tillägget att jag har en helt egen inre tendens att ordna intrycken, kunskaperna - en tendens också att se - på mitt eget sätt. Nittionio procent av tiden ser jag genom de kunskapsperspektiv som ordnats för mig av andra. Dock, i benådade stunder - i utsatta situationer eller i sällsynta stunder av ro - kan de utifrån kommande kunskaperna och sociala impulserna skalas bort. En inre kärna av jaget kläs av och kan se världen och sig själv fritt från alla de färdiga raster och perspektiv som det annars omges av.

Sådana ögonblick av naken vakenhet och fritt seende är sällsynta och snart övergående. Men det jag då ser, anar och förstår blir kvar i mitt medvetande som mitt alldeles egna möte med tillvaron, och vetskapen att jag har ett alldeles eget öga, vetskapen att jag har ett öga som kan se på sitt eget vis - denna vetskap blir en kompass, en inre kompass som kan ge mig ro att välja min väg.

Jag pratar med min syster Cecilia om detta, och hon är lite förvånad över att jag inte vill kalla detta ”gud”. Jag står på mig att det finns en skillnad, men vi återkommer nog till det.


Utsiktspunkt II. Skrea Strand, Falkenberg (foto DD)