Reflections

Just where did February go? The promise (hope?) of more regular posts has not materialised: apologies.

This month has been rather busy with lectures on ‘Spaces of politics’; several bus journeys over to Cambridge for events on at the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH); a couple of trips to London to visit part of the Office of Experiments (OoE) and attend a discussion at the RGS-IBG (a colleague and friend was in dialogue with the president Michael Palin); preparation for a grant towards a collaborative training scheme; a few meetings with my supervisors and plenty of reading. Perhaps not enough writing though…

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Dewsbury, J-D. (2009) Performative, Non-representational, and Affect-Based Research: Seven Injunctions. In: DeLyser, D., Atkin, S., Crang, M., Herbert, S. & McDowell, L. (eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Research in Human Geography. London: Sage. Ch. 18

This is a very welcome paper to find in a handbook of research methods within human geography, advocating resolute experimentalism through the series of seven bold injunctions. Striking in its opening, the chapter is built around four key qualifications that are outlined early on. Firstly, there are few references to qualitative research in geography. Secondly, the emphasis is on the generation of problems rather than solutions. Thirdly, and perhaps unsurprisingly given Dewsbury’s other publications, there is an emphasis on the non-representational. Lastly, the paper attempts to stage the danger of scientism, the view that natural sciences have authority over all interpretations of life. As part of this ethos of disrupting, Dewsbury calls for us to strive to think the unthought and contends that this must take place at every step of the research because “[m]ethodology is far from dull: it is extremely political” (p. 323).

Following a lengthy (though necessary) introduction, the chapter opens out to explore some key agendas within performative research: thinking, sensing and presenting. Arguing that methodologies have always been somewhat improvised, Dewsbury suggests that approaches which fall broadly under the banner of the performative question why only some ways of knowing count. Put differently, performative research embraces the failures as much as the successes of research. This of course raises the thorny question of what might be considered a failure, and who might be able to decide whether or not something is a failure, an issue which is perhaps not adequately addressed. Running throughout the piece is the aforementioned series of injunctions, which are compared to proscriptions rather than prescriptions; proscriptions do not “suggest a formula or a known or better way to proceed to in performative methodological endeavour” (p. 322). This term reminded me of Whitehead’s (and more recently Isabelle Stengers’ and Erin Manning’s) use of propositions. Neither judgements nor necessarily true, propositions are theories-in-the-making, generative constraints for the opening of a relational process (Manning, 2009). Dewsbury’s injunctions-proscriptions-propositions encourage the reader to: embrace experimentation (rather than fret about the risks), have conviction in your experiments, not fear the judgement that tethers social science to scientific values (such as efficacy and rigour), remember you are producing an understanding of the world because it is not given, concentrate on experience, and to be more acute and cute in the research stories told.

The chapter is sharp, witty and eminently readable. It might even be described as a manifesto for doing non-representational geography. Witness:

“The idea is to get embroiled in the site and allow ourselves to be infected by the effort, investment, and craze of the particular practice or experience being investigated. Some might call this participation, but it is a mode of participation that is more artistic and, as with most artistic practices, it comes with the side-effect of making us more vulnerable and self-reflexive. It is not however an argument for losing ourselves in the activity and deterritorializing ourselves completely from our academic remit, but nor does it mean sitting on the sidelines and judging. Rather the move, in immersing ourselves in the space, is to gather a portfolio of ethnographic ‘exposures’ that can act as lightening rods for thought. It is then in those key ‘times out’ as we set upon generating inventive ways of addressing and intervening in that which is happening, and has happened, as an academic, that such a method produces its data: a series of testimonies to practice. This is of course the flipping over of ‘participant observation’ to ‘observant participation’ that Thrift made (2000) to emphasise the serious empirical involvement involved in non-representational theory’s engagement with practices, embodiment and materiality.” (p. 326-327)

It is not however, Dewsbury reminds us, a question of ‘anything goes’. Embracing uncertainty through experimentation and employing an extended notion of the empirical – where encounters might include readings of philosophy, material sites or even research problematics – might allow for alternative methodological strategies (see also Adkins & Lury, 2009). Therefore, alongside an ethos of disrupting, there is also an “ethos of stretching the means by which research is done and striving to continue as experiments fail or always come short in the attempt” (p. 323). Here, research is treated as an ongoing process, where data – or rather materials (see Whatmore, 2003) – could, and perhaps should, include “the feelings, the codes, the awkward intensities, the architected space, the architecture of time, to name but a few” (p. 326). The attempt at the articulation of these empirical experiences or events is more important than its success; indeed, the very attempt to articulate is part of a project which takes materials seriously, allowing them to work-with, and against, initial research questions. Approaches need to be adapted to each singular situation; there is no one-size-fits-all methodology which can be used and re-used again and again. To combat this methodological conservatism we are encouraged to engage with resolute experimentalism, at once productive, proliferative and interfering.

References

Adkins, L. & Lury, C. (2009) Introduction: What Is the Empirical? European Journal of Social Theory, 12(1): 5-20

Manning, E. (2009) Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Whatmore, S. (2003) Generating materials. In: Pryke, M., Rose, G. & Whatmore, S. (eds.) Using Social Theory: Thinking Through Research. London: Sage

Berlin: fieldsite / intervention?

We agreed to ‘meet’ on Skype at 14:00 (GMT) on Thursday 21.01.2010 to continue our discussion, started in September, and before that by email. By we, I mean myself, Anna Engberg-Pedersen and Christina Werner. Anna and Christina are both based on the Institute for Spatial Experimentation [Institut für Raumexperimente (IfR)] in Berlin, itself an on-going experimentation in pedagogy.  Unfortunately the Skype connection was unstable and Anna and Christina ended up calling me on my home phone (I was in my flat). It was much better audio quality but meant that I was unable to record both sides of the conversation. Anna asked how my work was going and wanted to know about my time in Montreal. I explained as best I could what I had been up to, outlining the people I had been working with and the spaces I had been moving in. Although Anna had not heard of the SenseLab or the TML, she was well aware of Brian Massumi and Erin Manning and told me she had very much enjoyed reading Brian’s (2002) book Parables for the Virtual.

Christina then came on the phone – I was on loud-speaker their end – and asked me about my interests, but said that first, she would tell me how the previous semester had been. Christina and Erik Ellingsen take care of the running of the school and their work oscillates between the studio (Olafur’s) and the school. The winter semester (2009/2010) was very busy for them, and the twenty students or so were involved in class discussions (some with Olafur), reading groups (organised and led by Christina and Erik) as well as workshops with invited guests. There are also public lectures and meetings which follow a more classical (or orthodox) form. The time with Christina and Erik aims to cover what they describe as the ‘standard stuff’, which seemed to suggest reading which would help situate the more experimental sessions. One example of these sessions was to create a book on-the-fly; the students had three days to design and make a book comprised of lots of different parts. This can be seen as part of the Institute’s attempt to challenge and actively work against so-called ‘ready-made’ knowledge.

The Institut für Raumexperimente is in itself an experiment. To me, the experiment as a mode of inquiry is necessary if we are to insist on a constant, probing and generous interaction with reality. Or to put it differently: by engaging in experimentation, we can challenge the norms by which we live and thus produce reality.¹

It was now my turn to explain so I sketched out my research questions and interests, notably: the historio-philsophical lineage of their experiment(s), the architecture of space and how it might facilitate experimentation (as well as what kinds of experiments) and an exploration of what is at stake (in effect, asking what purpose the Institute/school serves). All really relevant questions, I was told, and Christina and Anna were keen to detail some of the facets of the Institute. Firstly, whilst it is an Institute it occupies a strange position in relation to the College of Fine Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts [Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK)] and operates outside of the institutional framework of the university, although its public lectures are open to all of its members. Secondly, the IfR provides hybrid space which at once offers close ties to a practising artist’s studio (downstairs) as well as a place to do research. The students are invited to lunch in the studio twice a week – where they are able to make links to all kinds of people – and are provided with an accessible place, with room to work. Thirdly, there is no syllabus as such; instead there are themes. The IfR is concerned with trying to make connections: it works to push us to think differently. So whilst the semesters are unplanned, there is room to respond to invited speakers and other visiting academics or artists. Trajectories are constructed, connections are seized upon and there is a tendency to experiment with ideas. Indeed, the teaching is an experiment in itself which is a five-year research project. The IfR is an educational platform, a space where people are trying to learn how to learn, an experimentation with experimentation.

The Institut für Raumexperimente is a research experiment attached as a satellite to the College of Fine Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts. Its purpose is to experiment with new approaches to teaching art in the university setting. The programme focuses on spatial practices and problems in the fine arts and their intersection with architecture as well as their relationship to the humanities and natural sciences. By way of workshops, experiments, different exhibition formats, publications, and symposia, participants are encouraged to interact across disciplinary boundaries and to productively engage with the intersections between art and scholarship.

When asked what I would like, or hoped, to do in terms of fieldwork, I replied that I would be guided by them although I would very much appreciate the chance to visit the Institute and to meet the people who worked there. Christina said that they had been discussing beforehand what they could offer me, and made two different propositions. The first is to apply for a short-term grant for postgraduate study which would last six months, or one semester (April-September). This position is offered to those who are either (a) involved in further education more advanced than the students at the School or those who are (b) not artists, in order to make different sorts of connections. The role is fairly open-ended, with the award-holder expected to be there full-time, attend all events and be able to mediate the content, to provide another perspective. The deadline: 15^th February 2010. The second option would be more non-committal and would allow for me to be in Berlin for a month or so, where I would be able to sit in on all the events that I would like. The IfR is keen to cultivate a feeling of hospitality as well as make links across and beyond disciplines. The next semester’s theme will be landscape architecture, with an interest in architecture and sound. Sounds good!

At Institut für Raumexperimente, time and space are considered inseparable even at a methodological level. Space cannot be externalised; it isn’t representational and nor are the experiments with which we work. To work spatially does not necessarily entail the creation of representational distance, and we can precisely avoid this distance, essentially static and unproductive, by insisting that time is a constituent of space. Or as a friend has said: space is ‘a constantly mutating simultaneity of stories-so-far’.

Experimentality: Experimental Subjects, Lancaster University

The week before last (14-15 January),  I made the trip up to Lancaster University for a conference on ‘Experimental Subjects’, part of the current Ex?erimenta!ity series.

Experimentality is a year-long collaborative exploration of ideas and practices of experimentation in science and technology, the arts, commerce, politics, popular culture, everyday life, and the natural world. Participants in a series of linked events will use the notion of the experiment to explore vital questions about the relationship between knowledge and power, freedom and control in the modern world.¹

I missed a few of the earlier conferences as I was out of the country but took the chance to attend whilst I am ‘between’ field-sites. I was pleasantly surprised by how many people were present at the event – somewhere between 30 and 40 – and the papers/presentations were interesting, if varied. Some of the highlights included an exploration of different sorts of experimentation (experimenta fructifera and experimenta lucifera) by Bronislaw Szersynski, who later went on to argue that experiments create the conditions for the emergence of an event. He drew on Giorgio Agamben’s work at times, which is something I have not really engaged in (yet)… In the same session, although not presenting, Adrian MacKenzie was keen to focus on experience: where is the experiment experienced? Are there sites of intensified experience? Unfortunately, these questions were elided.

On the Friday there was a fascinating talk by Lisa Blackman who was interested in practices of experimentation as forms of experimental stagecraft and was perhaps the only speaker at the conference who engaged with affect (as an aside, she mentioned a forthcoming special issue of ‘Body & Society’ which tries to grapple with affect). She made reference to Stengers’ concern with ‘risky’ research: allowing questions to be re-qualified as the research unfolds.²

Perhaps most fascinating, for me, was the talk by Neal White. I have been in contact with Neal by email for several months so it was really good to meet up and chat. I am exploring the possibilities of working with him as part of my series of fieldwork sites/interventions/moments. Interested in the work of Trevor Paglen (who may have coined the phrase ‘Experimental Geography’) and fresh from a recent collaboration with the UCL Geography Department on a project (‘Dark Places’), Neal is no stranger to geography. However, the main reason I got in touch was because Neal is the founder and coordinator of the ‘Office of Experiments’:

An intermittent institution dedicated to experiments, experimental knowledge and intuitive logic. THE OFFICE OF EXPERIMENTS aim is to respond to or create a context for the production and display of materials, practices and events in which the experimental element is paramount, if not rationalised, as art.³

Drawing on Rheinberger (1997), White argues that experimentation, as a machine for making the future, has to bring about unexpected events. He is interested in the relation between experimentation and events, whilst not reducing it to ‘spectacle’ (arguing that most people expect spectacle rather than participation). His concerns are not dissimilar to mine: to problematise the subject/object relationship; to question the roles of viewer and artist; and to re-examine the space(s) in which experiments can take place. We are hoping to continue our conversation in early February.

There was time at the end of the two-day conference for a round-table discussion which raised some important themes, and asked ‘Why experiment, and why now?’ Tellingly, the texts that were most often referred to were far from recent⁴.  Indeed, when looking for one of the books since returning from the conference, I stumbled across a review of it which noted that:

One of the most interesting and important trends in the history and philosophy of science has been the recent work on experiment. Most philosophy of science, and sometimes even history of science, either neglects experiments – how they are done and what role they play – or treats their results as unproblematical. Peter Galison’s How Experiments End is a major contribution to the growing body of work that is correcting that view.⁵

It makes me wonder what happened to that body of work, as it seems to be rarely referenced. Perhaps I have just been looking in the wrong direction! On a slightly different, another thing that struck me was that the students who were helping out were wearing lab-coats. I wondered why they were rehearsing a particularly scientific notion of experimentation. Perhaps it was mildly subversive that social-scientists were claiming the right to experiment but I thought it was a missed opportunity.

The next conference in the series will be ‘Experimental Objects’ on 18-19 February.

Multitudes #34 (Autumn 2008)

This journal looks well worth checking out:

Established in 2006, Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy is dedicated to publishing the latest work on continental philosophy, along with new translations and interviews with contemporary thinkers.

There are not one but two (!) current issues: #7 On Gilbert Simondon and #8 The Post/Human Condition.

Another bookmarked journal of mine is Multitudes, “une revue politique, artistique et philosophique”. The content is arranged thematically and engages with contemporary debates. Don’t be put off by the French!

Fieldlife, TML

I’ve been back from Montreal for a few weeks now and it all seems very far away at times. I have met up with my supervisors to let them know a bit about how things went and I’m now trying to work on an account of my time there. It’s not going to be some coherent piece, let alone a chapter, but perhaps some strands of thought will emerge as I write. Or at least I hope so! At the same time I’m also trying to outline the structure and chapters of my thesis. It’s certainly an iterative process but I think it might be useful to explore how some of the constraints of a PhD might prove to be enabling or generative.

Expect some more posts in the new year, have a merry Christmas,

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View of downtown Montreal

Now in the last week of my stay in Montreal, I am preparing to head back to Oxford. There’s been a lot to take in and at times, I’ve wondered what research materials I am generating. I recently filled in a Graduate Supervision System (GSS) entry on my ‘progress’ this term and thought I might include it here as a (somewhat limited) summary or reminder of some of the things I’ve been doing and thinking since I arrived.

I have spent this term in Montreal, where I have been exploring a variety of spaces of aesthetic experimentation. Affiliated to both the Topological Media Lab and the SenseLab, as well as an active member of Hexagram (an institution for research-creation), this fieldwork has allowed for a prolonged engagement with notions of experimentation, interactive or responsive environments, rapid prototyping and ethico-aesthetic play, as well as collective action.

I have been involved in reading groups, classes, colloquia, workshops and aspects of experimental design. I adopted an experimental approach where I have sought to be not only an attentive observant but allow room for the research to unfold and develop in unexpected ways. An example of this has been working with a choreographer in the development of a theatrical production.

It has been very stimulating to work with people who have read similar philosophers to myself (such as Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, James, Whitehead) but also be able to share new avenues of enquiry (including, but not limited to, Bateson, Debaise and Simondon). Moreover, it has been fruitful to talk about my work to others, forcing me to rethink and refine aspects of my questions. One area that I’ve been thinking about in particular concerns collaboration, and how this might not necessarily result in some ‘thing’. Collaboration might be better thought of as processual, and not necessarily goal-oriented. This also relates to how to how I might address questions of participation, ‘critical distance’ and my role, such as it is, within the labs.

I have tried to generate materials through visual means (photos, video), textual (diaries, blog entries) and talks (recorded, remembered). Responding to the call to attend to registers which are neither talk nor text has proven more problematic but has been explored through diagrams.

I’m hoping to keep active on the blog when I return to Oxford – with an aim for more regular posts rather than flurries of them – and have a few book reviews that I’m working on at the moment. I’m also trying to translate one of Didier Debaise’s articles. As ever: watch this space!

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Pont de la Concorde, Montreal

Didier Debaise recently came to Montreal to present his current research, which Brian Massumi described as a speculative pragmatism. He explored the resurgence of speculative philosophy (philosophies?) of the past decade or so and is currently trying to put it to the test by asking if we can have a non-anthropocentric approach to the subject. Rather than do away with the notion of a subject, or extend what the human indicates, Didier would suggest that we retake all the categories of the subject and redistribute them across nature. In effect, he is asking: can we talk of subjectivity for non-humans? This refusal to begin with the human or, put differently, a development of propositions that are non-human, resonates with several philosophers whose work was largely ignored in the twentieth century: Tarde, Whitehead and James (in Europe).

In the second event, Didier went on to elaborate, making links between Whitehead and Simondon, outlining what sort of descriptions constructivism and speculative pragmatism do and explained his critique of anthropology (less a rejection, more a desire to highlight its limits). The conversation was lively and there was an interesting discussion on ‘distance’. Rather than create some kind of distance (“se mettre en distance”), Didier suggested that we need artifices, citing Deleuze’s claim that we need to make things resemble with methods which do not resemble one another (“faire ressemblant avec des moyens non ressemblants”). Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to find the original quotation… although there is something similar in What is Philosophy?

Conférence publique / séminaire
Didier Debaise, Institut Max Planck, Berlin

Conférence

“Métaphysique des sujets. Reconstruire la notion de subjectivité avec Tarde et Whitehead”

18 novembre 18h00
SenseLab, Pavillon EV, Université Concordia, local 11.625
1515, Ste-Catherine Ouest, métro Guy-Concordia

Séminaire

20 novembre 9h30 – 11h30
11h30 – 12h00 lunch léger
Pavillon Marie-Victorin, Université de Montréal, local B-427
90, Vincent d’Indy, métro Édouard-Montpetit

Lectures préparatoires :
—Didier Debaise, « Qu-est-ce qu’une pensée relationnelle ? » (sur Simondon)
—Didier Debaise, « Une philosophie des interstices. Whitehead et la question du vivant »
—Bruno Latour, « Tarde’s Idea of Quantification »

If anyone would like to listen to the lecture and/or the seminar, please get in touch.

Queuing for Pecha Kucha #14, SAT

I went along to a Pecha Kucha evening recently (although already ten days ago!), after I was invited by Chris Salter. He mentioned:

If you haven’t been, it’s totally fun and crazily packed with people. It will give you a good slice of what is going on with the design, architecture, arts and technology communities here.

Crazily packed is certainly true! Not only did I have to queue to get in, but the SAT was heaving with people (certainly well over 600 people). Although I had been ‘back-stage’ at the SAT – well, upstairs, anyway – I hadn’t seen the space they have for public events. There are two enormous rooms and these were both teeming with people.

Pecha Kucha Montréal #14
a unique kind of meeting with the design community
20 images x 20 seconds x come to be inspired !

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
doors open @ 19:40
presentations start @ 20:20
SAT [Société des arts technologiques]
1195 Saint-Laurent
5 $

Pecha Kucha nights are unique, vital platforms for interdisciplinary exchanges and meetings organized with the primary objective of providing public forum in which creators from diverse horizons can present their thoughts and processes on projects that have been completed, are underway or that they are still dreaming about. The concept is simple: each participant presents 20 slides and comments on each one for 20 seconds.

Chris introduced the research he is doing in his lab (xmodal), part of Hexagram at Concordia and Luc Courchesne, the director of the Panoscope project, also gave a short presentation.

What is particularly interesting about xmodal is that is avowedly a studio-lab, a term which Chris himself takes from the work of Barry et al. (2008), which is where I discovered the term myself.

labXmodal is a studio-lab founded by Chris Salter dedicated to the research, development, and creation of performative environments – physical spaces with a focus on dynamic and temporal processes over static objects and representations. We research and develop new hardware and software sensing technologies, apply these tools and techniques in solo + collaborative, internationally disseminated artistic works and critically reflect on these practices through technical and theoretical/historical publications, talks and public presentations.

The evening was bizarre (people talking through the presentations, a bar open in one room, large screens on all walls) but of great interest and definitely entertaining. If only all conferences adopted this approach!

Pecha Kucha proves popular, SAT