Kyotobook a Research Portfolio

KYOTObook a research portfolio with regard to the unknown we are slow and impatient— between a poster’s body-size expression (180cm x 90cm) and A5 flyer-contents, I conceive this volume as found mediations, revealed or yet to come—l’à venir in Jacques Derrida’s sense (Mal d’archive). A material expression (the poster) and a material content (the flyers): Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev’s programme from 1943, the ‘transformational half-chains’ determined by Gilbert Simondon. this volume is a non-book, or a book turned inside-out— [email protected] KHIO—Oslo National Academy of the Arts [email protected] cover: printed on plotter at KHiO by Brynhild Seim [who also printed the vinyl poster for the WAC 08 conference in Sept. 2016] body-text printed by 07media [Jan. 2018]: www.07.no 11 pt. bau Book-title—32 pt. bau [used on the body-size poster original: 180cm x 90cm] 115g Arctic matt 4+4 colours in 100x 100x Colorit red [backboard] ENTER The present volume is a small part of a larger research activity conducted by the editor at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO). As the physical volume its precedents are 1) interceptions[at]centre_pompidou (2011), a collaborative project with the Norwegian Academy of Music [NMH], and 2) Commons in Transit (2015) that were both archives compiled in books. These projects were based on a strict chronological delivery-regime—the archive as a legal deposit—and bound for the intention for use in future research (whether by the author himself, or others who were interested). The 2011-volume was hot-glue bound, while the 2015 was cold-glue bound, according to a method used at the National Archive, at Ian Brown’s suggestion. With the present volume, the intention has been to drive the process of book-building one step onwards: the core is bound according to the National Archive Standard. It is also a low-cost publication, as the other two, both in regard of the paper & printing costs and in regard of the amount of work put into the design. The idea being to reach for what is needed, not the ultimate. The KYOTObook has been compiled and developed with the idea of book-format that itself constitutes a maker-space—and gives an idea of a maker-space—with contents that are in-the- making. It departs from the traditional work-in-progress format in that materiality of the book communicates a validity of the maker-space; as a place to live and work. These ideas are cultivated not to undermine the validity of the finished product—finalised text, layout and production—but to claim the res publica (public matter/thing) of making; which is what we, in a number of different aspects, is what we ask of our students in the context of the art school. This is to highlight a) the experimental process, and b) the process of value-making. If one of the major statements of the art-school—as an educational and cultural establishment—is the intrinsic value of the process of exploring creative venues and developing project activities, then these must somehow (or, at some point) be made readable to a third party. Readability is here used in an extended sense; acting and receiving in a public context. Which brings us to the broader superordinate research question that guides the miscellany of experimental formats the editor seeks to develop, in the wake of activities in artistic research: whether these are pedagogic (cf, the emphasis on portfolio development in the MA theory curriculum in deign), collaborative (the majority of the projects), or solitary as in this volume. The heading of this overarching research-topic is signage for wayfinding in timescapes, it queries the possibility and utility of using a mark-up system—the HEX-signatures—that help to develop a third-party interest/readability of portfolios growing organically out of artistic research, as an artistic proposition addressed to the current relevance of portfolios (e.g., at universities). A rationale for marking up the documentary trail of artistic research is of course to incorporate it into the maker-space. But it is also to take portfolios one step further, to tweak a surplus out of a personal process (i.e., the research portfolio, as in this volume), which then becomes available for the variety of work-book formats that we find at the graduate, post-graduate and 3rd cycle level. The elements of the materials conjoined in the present volume are to be considered as ‘conversation pieces’. That is, materials that live and work in conversations. In the broader scope of the editor’s KUF these are cultivated in a series of ongoing conversations with: Ane Thon Knutsen, Tore Vagn Lid, Karen Disen, Trond Mikkelsen, Bjørn Blikstad and Ludvig Uhlbors. These are colleagues at KHiO. At AHO similar conversations have emerged with Carsten Loly and Rolf Gerstlauer. These are concerned, in different ways, with drawing. The former with drawing as a programming device—in the broadest sense—the latter with the transition from writing to drawing and back. Here our emphasis is on latent mediations, reverberation and the neuro-diverse. Due thanks go to the Board of Artistic Research for funding the production of this volume—and the journey to Kyoto—to Dragos Gheorghiu and José Pellini for accepting the core papers at WAC08 in Kyoto (and for inviting me as chair and discussant), to Mike Sperlinger to reading & reacting to the added materials, and to Jørn Mortensen and Karianne Bjellås Gilje for support. Theodor Barth (ed.) KYOTObook prolegomenon How is it possible for humans to And making up for the dangers There is only a thin wall Thereby bringing to attention engage in artistic research only of ending up with the claims of between this way of working— experiments as constructive to note —at some point—that a ‘department of dislocated cultivating personal goals and aspects of experience, before they have acquired skills for memories’, my interest was fed building a community of their potential value for human which they previously had no by the challenge of tracing the practice—and the workings of circulation (whether through talent, ways of knowing that steps of theory-development the contemporary Hacking- and publication or for business), earlier was beyond their which design disciplines have in Makerspaces4 . With its access harking back to Goethe’s horizon of capabilities, and a store, when looking to specialis- to high-standard laser-cutters, experimentalism7 and its newsreel of memories that they ations we teach at the Oslo CNC-mills, 3D-printers the importance for ‘natural history’, cannot have? This is my query. National Academy of the Arts. school has that infrastructure. as a broad scientific tradition. For its attention, I have opted My perception was that they That is, an infrastructure of It is presently re-surfacing with for an experimental report, were simply not receiving any machines and works-masters the work of the Swiss type- verging unto the format of an help from a design theory— that help the students to target designer Karl Gerstner (1964), artist-book, in order to be able beyond the historical accounts their objectives and develop in which he draws on Fritz to work more freely with the —its being busy achieving a skills in a climate of mutual Zwicky’s broad-scoping of question. Though without contemporary status of a assistance and exchange when morphological analysis’(1957)8 , abandoning the idea that a discourse (on par with the hacking solutions. However, from a research-method based meaningful dialogue between contemporary art-field). They KHiO is not a typical hacker- on Zwicky's experience as an ideas & evidence, should follow became hostage to the dialectic space, in that it also has a astro-physicist. Let me explain a logic of inquiry. of the colonised and coloniser. professional-vocational motif. the connection to Goethe. In my doctoral work1 there was As an anthropologist I am prone The research-portfolio can In Goethe’s tradition, form is one issue of fieldwork- to be particularly sensitive to therefore be seen as an not an “add-on” to- but surfaces methodology that I returned to, this sort of disempowerment. interface—or, a hybrid— genetically from the substance at several occasions in the And for this reason, I was also between the Maker-culture of natural phenomena. The thesis: how pattern can emerge predisposed to be critical of running the corridors & experimental design thereby from detail, how the researcher any theoretical endeavour that workshops, and the specialised links up with the substance of can gain a broader wisdom by was not derived from a practi- curricula offered at the KHiO. It what we learn, in a scope of diving into the particular, and cal, hands-on, perspective of allows the students to develop a things where learning, and edu- how the practical context of doing and making; looking to a form of legitimate peripheral cating the human senses, are travelling, here, plays a role. richer account of the journey. participation; a reflective form. tributaries of natural history. These are questions of the In my classes with the MA- That is, in Lave & Wenger’s The education of the human eye traveler and typical of the students we would work terms (1991)5 , a form of becomes part of the pheno- fieldworking anthropologist; iteratively with a format apprenticeship in connecting menon that we call “colour”. whose premise is to stay for a departing from the ethno- what they learn in their special- Human being and its ende- while—some times a prolonged graphic field-diary3 to one isations and what they learn avours are not separate from stretch of time—and then to which—in local parlance—we from becoming “streetwise” in nature, nor are its attempts to move on.

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