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inactiveTopic Question 3 topic started 02.07.2001; 17:37:03
last post 06.11.2002; 21:58:34
Art & Language - Question 3  blueArrow
02.07.2001; 17:37:03 (reads: 82683, responses: 7)
Are models which generalize questions of academic expert cultures a function of art (compare annotations 60, 93, 107, 168, 190, 191, 193, 291, 306), or is art itself a question of specialization (compare annotations 38, 58, 193)? Besteht die Funktion der Kunst im Vorstellen von Modellen zur Generalisierung von Fragen akademischer Expertenkulturen (vgl. Annotations 60, 93, 107, 168, 190, 191, 193, 291, 306), oder ist Kunst eine Frage der Spezialisierung (als weitere Expertenkultur, vgl. Annotations 38, 58, 193)?


Art & Language - Answer 3/1  blueArrow
03.07.2002; 17:37:12 (reads: 67324, responses: 0)
The issue of specialization has to do with the arbitrary bureacuratic closure of talking and learning in and around art. It may be dressed up in any manner of respectable academic garb. Competencies remain insufficiently theorized. But this is not a function of their relationship to contingency. Michael Corris(InvCollege@aol.com)


Art & Language - Answer 3/2  blueArrow
05.07.2002; 22:25:34 (reads: 68914, responses: 0)
... And in that sense, art is or rather is something that seeks only to refuse or to make impossible the conditions of confident specialisation. In this process questions of expertise and so forth get broken down. Michael Baldwin/Mel Ramsden(ARTLANGUAGE@aol.com)


Thomas Dreher - Answer 3/3  blueArrow
13.07.2002; 21:29:41 (reads: 67781, responses: 0)
Exemplary experiments are within the natural sciences bound to their state of differentiation within expert cultures and to problems which arise within certain state of research affairs, meanwhile artistic models of observation can be able to (re-)construct possible kinds of world observation beside expert cultures or as a transgression of expert cultures.

Modellversuche in Naturwissenschaften sind an deren jeweilige Ausdifferenzierung zu Expertenkulturen und an Probleme, die mit dem jeweiligen Forschungsstand auftauchen, gebunden, während künstlerische Beobachtungsmodelle aus der Warte von Weisen der Weltbeobachtung von Nicht-Experten dort Zusammenhänge (wieder) herstellen können, wo Expertenkulturen von Umweltfaktoren absehen, die außerhalb ihrer Fachbereiche liegen. Thomas Dreher (TDreher@onlinehome.de)


Michael Corris - Answer 3/4  blueArrow
02.11.2002; 12:51:50 (reads: 68037, responses: 0)
Is transgression an absolute category, If the avant-garde is an expert culture of transgressors, does this present a paradox? But expert cultures is perhaps too broad a category. Is this the same as Kuhnian normal science? Let's not oppose art and science in this way, as it distorts the history of science (removes the contingent, the amateur, the mistaken assumption that leads to a credible experimental result, the reconstruction of discovery, etc) as much as the history of art (purposeful purposelessness; anti-paradigmatic, "free", unrestrained, a desideratum for liberalism, etc.). The practical outcome of such an ideological split is that the dolts and dyslexics are shunted to art, while the bright boys and girls go to science. Nobel laureates collect art, while some artists jealously eye the prevalence of "scientistic" hegemonies. We must do better. Michael Corris (InvCollege@aol.com)


Thomas Dreher - Answer 3/5  blueArrow
04.11.2002; 19:03:05 (reads: 67309, responses: 0)
Response to Michael Corris´ answer 3/4:
Two basic misunderstandings:
First: You use the term art in your answer in a way which subverts my intention.
Second: You exaggerate the value of the term transgression which you can´t find in my german version of 3/3.
Ad 1: I conceptualize art as an activity in a net of relations (which are usually based on systems with higher differentiations). I avoid conceptualizations of art as a fixed context with professional artists. I conceptualize the term art in relation to concepts, events, activism and net.art (artivism), not in relations to art academies, universities, museums and galleries.
Art as an expert culture for art observation finds its alternative in activities which try to create interactions between different fields/cultures/systems whose experts are normally more engaged in careers, fund raising and other internal power relations.
The effects of activities of experts to other contexts are usually not part of the self description or observation of these expert cultures. These cultures within closed systems have to be corrected (re-related to their surroundings) by engaged citizens which constitute a public interested in their own rights without regard of (or in conflict with) economic interests: Political solutions are necessary.
Engaged citizens can articulate some public interests without commercial or other private background in a way that there utterances/performances will be registered by more and more people as socially/politically relevant. If you call engaged persons besides professional and commercial interests part-time (for the time of their engagement) activists or artivists: it doesn´t matter.
Some kinds of Intermedia art are able to reconceptualize established ways of world observation and to correct public opinions of problems which are either not instutionalized as art or science or are institutionalized in these departments in ways which demand external corrections.
I don´t conceptualize an engaged art as a profession which one chooses as a limited field of activity for a life-time. I try to sketch out fields/kinds of activities which are open for everyone´s engagement including all experts who want to observe the actual interpenetrations between their professional contexts and other contexts and to find problems, problem solutions and concepts for their realization.
An art collector who first wants to buy works of f. e. Hans Haacke or Stephen Willats and second is really interested in their critical view of the world should draw the consequences of point two for his own political engagement and should forget point one (He can use his money for social relevant things). Thomas Dreher (TDreher@onlinehome.de)


Michael Corris - Answer 3/6  blueArrow
05.11.2002; 09:42:41 (reads: 67320, responses: 0)
In the debate on paradigm shifts in science, one finds a concern with explanatory power. A new theory or paradigm is deemed more powerful if it is able to explain all the phenomenon covered by the older theory, plus those phenomenon that are identified as anomalies with respect to the older theory. The problem with this view is that it assumes that both theories entail either (a) an identical world, or (b) translatability between the objects of one theory and those of another. If your definition of art entails practices and aims beyond the horizon of what you take to be an art related to "academies, universities, museums and galleries" then we are really talking about two different worlds. If "the effects of activities of experts to other contexts are usually not part of the self description or observation of these expert cultures" then how are they part of a network-based conception of art? It is the concept of networking that requires reflection. To my mind, to say that networking entails social responsibility is not an adequate response. Is it the case that none of the problems raised by "experts" in (institutional or normal) art are considered to be real by practitioners embedded in a networking culture? Somehow, the polarization of alternatives leads us back to the Kuhn-Feyerabend debate. For me, "net.art (activism)", etc., are still strange. I don't think the debate is about what is, and what is not art. Rather, what is, and what is not, susceptible to and complicit with the bureaucratization of imaginative practice as art. It is obvious that net.art constitutes a different world for art. But how does net.art "irritate" normal art? Is it in dialogue with normal art, but only at a distance? Is net.art another art gang? Is this a false problem? Your final proposition reveals your stance. It also suggests that the "critical view of the world" of artists is not located in the work (that's a type of fetishism), but in the (some) processes that led to the work taking this particular form. The form is contingent on other interests (normal, institutional art), and comes to us always already (sorry for the deconstructionist cliche) deformed ( that is, fixed and incapable of self-transformatory reflection). My rejoinder is not intended to be adequate by any means. But I think our mutual "scripts" identify an important site of inquiry. We've just "ring fenced" our discourse. I should like us to break out of that as soon as possible. Polarization will get us nowhere on this issue. Michael Corris (InvCollege@aol.com)


Thomas Dreher - Answer 3/7  blueArrow
06.11.2002; 21:58:34 (reads: 73913, responses: 0)
Response to Michael Corris´answer 3/6:
Dear Michael, polarization is sometimes helpful. If we conceptualize a dialogue as a dialectic between argument and counterargument then we have to polarize. And this antique conceptualization of a dialogue helps us to conceptualize polarization as a passage in an argumentational process. The new rhetoric of Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca are a relevant source for me in these cases (here: Traité de l´argumentation. Bruxelles, deuxieme edition 1970, p.46f.: Quintilian: "la dialectique"="la poing fermée" et "la rhétorique"="une main ouverte"). And "the new rhetoric" is part of the history of the discourse of A & L in the early seventies, as you know (A-L, vol.3/nr.1, p.6,21,24,45). Let us proceed with the `dialectic´ character of dialogues which allows polarization.
"net.art" as another "art gang":
Here you are very funny (for me) and you fix a relevant case of the present development of net.art (which is a misnomer for me: I am interested in the hybrid relations between (h)activism and artivism. I am not really interested in borders between art and non-art and definitions of art...but my professional expertness is called "art historian". Irony helps...). Contemporary Net.art has some forms of presentation which can be described as virtual media with stable rules for variations (Manfred Faßler: "Virtualitätsgattungen", f. e. soundtoys).
The differences between some net.art and entertaining forms of art like f. e. computer games are of reduced relevance, because these virtual media have a certain amount of users (communities within a consumer society) who estimate the next million realizations but won´t change their preferences strong enough to cause changings of the implicit rules (which limit the generation of variants).
The typical pop culture phenomenon can be repeated with copyright or with intellectual potlatch, like techno music with copyleft. Pop culture reproduces old concepts of art forms and masters, and some communities of pop users produce variants of successful virtual media forms (sometimes called art, sometimes not). `The master´ is able to produce an interesting variant within seas of variants of the same rules which constitute precoded art forms/uses of media (Gattungen).
But with the digitalization some conceptual doubts became inevitable not only for the criticism of popular media but for some producers and consumers of mass media culture too, who began to estimate hybrid media and hybridizations. If you allow me to sloganize: The digitalization provoked and provokes reconceptualizations of intertextuality on the level of intermedia art and/or entertainment (`hybrid´ relations between media, popular media included).
The `transmedia´ digital software and computer hardware offer potentialities for so-called interactivity and combinations of verbal, audio and visual media. Conceptualizations of these media are not only relevant for an art practice (art gangs included), but artists can produce models which help to generate relevant media combinations in different fields of work.
Changings of the net architecture restrict free links and help copyright owners to manage their `deals´. Activists against these changings need different media practices to find a public. The experiments with these media help to find forms of presentation which allow activists to engage a wider public.
This is not only a problem how we can find voices for minorities. It is a problem how minorities and majorities of citizens can find a voice against the influences of corporations and administrations f. e. on legislation procedures. Here, we are far away from "art gangs" but we can use their media competence for entertaining presentations of contents which help to define the future possibilities of the net.
A relevant use of the term "art gang" in a wider frame of net culture could be: Professionals who use visual media within digital media combinations and the distributors of these professional products constitute "art gangs". Beside their forms of presentation are some uses of digital media of more interest, because they work beside stable rules. These forms beside the stable contexts/communities of popular culture need some writers who are able to point the attention of more and more people to them. It is easier to reach wider audiences since popular culture tries to renew itself via integrations of hybrid digital forms. Thomas Dreher (TDreher@onlinehome.de)


 



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