P O I E S I S A Journal of the Arts & Communication Volume 15, 2013 Editor: Stephen K. Levine Associate Editor: Jessica Moore • Art Director, Layout & Design: Kristin Briggs Poetry Editors: Elizabeth Gordon McKim and Shara Claire Art Curator: Lauren Schaffer • EGS Press Manager: Sarah Farr All Rights Reserved ©2013 EGS Press, except where otherwise indicated. 283 Danforth Avenue, #118 Toronto, Ontario, M4K 1N2 Canada [email protected] • www.egspress.com tel: (416) 829-8014 ISSN 1492-4986/2013 Cover Art: Writing the Moon by Chris Cran (2010), Ink and acrylic on foam core, 11” x 8.75”. Private Collection Other titles available from EGS Press: Minstrels of Soul: Intermodal Expressive Therapy (P. Knill et al) Tending the Fire: Studies in Art, Therapy and Creativity (E. G. Levine) Crossing Boundaries: Explorations in Therapy and the Arts– A Festschrift for Paolo Knill (S. Levine, Editor) To Day: Poems and Poetics (Margo Fuchs-Knill) Song the Only Victory: Poetry Against War (S. Levine) In Praise of Poiesis: The Arts and Human Existence– A Festschrift for Stephen K. Levine (E. G. Levine and P. Antze, Editors) Selected back issues of POIESIS are also available. POIESIS: A Journal of the Arts and Communication is an annual periodical which publishes research from the fields of Expressive Arts and Media & Communications. It is supported by the European Graduate School (EGS) in Switzerland, which offers Masters and Doctoral programs in these fields. Submissions for POIESIS XVI (2014), see “Call for Papers” on page 220. Printed in Canada articles Editor’s Introduction Stephen K. Levine 4 Poiesis and the Unworking of Art: A Conversation with Jean-Luc Nancy Stephen K. Levine 8 What are Philosophers for? An Interview with Judith Butler 18 On the World View of a Vita Activa Wolfgang Schirmacher 28 At the Stove with Ferran Adrià Christopher Fynsk 42 The Open Space of Art-Based Research Shaun McNiff 50 Knowing Not-Knowing: Rethinking Research as an Art-Analogue Process Sabine Silberberg 58 Seeing Art as RAW DATA: Artistic Transformation Koenig, Schild & Hufschmid 72 Maps, Flesh & the Radicant: Mobilizing the Expressive Arts and Arts-Based Research to do a Conceptual Translation of “Science-as-Usual” Kelly Clark/Keefe, Jessica Gilway, and Emily Miller 90 Love Letters, Notes and Post Cards: About Pedagogy, Ways of Knowing, and Arts-Based Research Vachel Miller, Katrina Plato, Kelly Clark/Keefe, John Henson, and Sally Atkins 106 The Beauty That Sustains: An Arts-Based Research Exploration of Expressive Arts Therapy with Children Ellen G. Levine and Stephen K. Levine 124 Playing with Auschwitz: A Liminal Inquiry into Images of Evil Lisa Herman 142 Per-forming Home: Spinning New Scripts for Re-Search Carrie MacLeod 152 Living Nel Mezzo: Becoming an Artist/Researcher/Teacher/Therapist in the Expressive Arts Jena Leake 164 Map as Theory, Theory as Map: Meditations from theMiddle of the Journey Kathleen Vaughan 174 Performance as Research–A Double Fold Patrick Phillips 190 Doctoral Dissertation Abstracts 2012 198 Contributors of Art 215 Contributors of Poetry 217 Call for Papers 220 2 12 Two Poems by Daniela Elza 26 Death From Above Stephen K. Levine 36 Three Poems by Dorota Kożusznik-Solarska 48 A little birdie told me… Stella Andonoff 56 What I am looking for James P. Lenfestey poetry68 Three Poems by Marc J. Straus 85 Three Poems by Thomas R. Smith 120 Accounting for Love (for Greer) Wes Chester 122 Sing or Sink in the Mud Judith Greer Essex 139 Three Poems by Norman Minnick 150 The Buoys of Fasaay’il (excerpt) Emily Fiddy 151 Eulogy for Hossein Blujani, 1981-2012 (excerpt) Carrie MacLeod 162 Newtown / Mill Fire Ash Elizabeth Gordon McKim 194 Seeing / Voir Jean-Luc Nancy Mowry Baden Calyx 7 Paulette Phillips The Directed Lie 16 Chris Cran Manifesto 27 Don Gill Erratic Spaces 40 Mowry Baden A Cappella 55 Wolfgang Laib Rice House 69 Marin Majic Bild 70 John Newsom The Great Divide 71 Lucy Pullen The Cloud Chamberand Hue 88 Matthew Thomson Golem 123 Chris Cran The Space It Takes 141 Rowesa Gordon Looking artAgain 149 Andrew Harwood Matte 188 3 Editor’s Introduction Stephen K. Levine What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. —Francis Bacon, Of Truth hat does arts-based research look for in its quest for truth? The truth that research seeks is normally taken to be something lasting, something that will not, in Plato’s image, act like a cowardly soldier Wwho runs away from his post at the first sign of attack, but is more like the cou- rageous man who remains there despite all onslaughts. This martial image – last man standing! – lends its tone to the enterprise of knowledge. In attempting to overturn this immovable image, Nietzsche asked what if truth were “a woman”?—which to him meant, what if knowledge was to be conceived as shifting, changeable, now wearing one costume and then another, never letting itself be seen in the altogether (the “naked truth”). In that case, truth could not be conquered by force (science as will to power) but would only yield itself to suitors who were themselves subtle and full of grace, who came not armed but with arms bearing gifts—metaphor, imagery, in short: poiesis. It was for this reason that Nietzsche said, in reflecting on his book, The Birth of Tragedy, “It should have sung, not spoken, this ‘new soul.’” 4 POIESIS: A Journal of the Arts and Communication 2013 Of course, gendered comparisons are no cal, for only mathematical ideas are, it seems, longer convincing. Whether the feminine be free of the ambiguity and obscurity inherent thought of as a deficient mode of the mascu- in both ordinary and poetic language. Even line or, in a transvaluation of values, as a hith- Husserl, whose phenomenological philoso- erto suppressed superior modality of being, phy tried to deconstruct the mathematical we are still operating within a kind of phal- basis of the Cartesian tradition (by showing logocentric thinking, in which the binary that it is itself grounded on the presupposi- opposition between masculine and feminine tion of the world of everyday life—the Leb- limits our options. Tertium non datur—for enswelt), even the founder of phenomenology this mode of thought, there is no third way. accepted the premise of the “apodictic” basis The consequence is that we must choose be- of evidence (one which cannot be doubted) tween science and art, truth and beauty. as the ultimate ground of truth. And the face of research today? Certainly Indeed, philosophy itself, in the form of it shows itself within the Platonic (or Faus- phenomenology, was meant to provide an tian) tradition—in search of a moment to indubitable foundation for all truth claims, which we could say, “Stay, thou art fair!” Of though for Husserl, evidence was ultimate- course there is the underbelly (or backside) ly to be understood as bodily presence. Of of the research project—on the one hand, course Husserl’s thinking was more complex the funding mechanisms by which research is than this; he understood that consciousness channeled into avenues that are commercially is always in flux and that its temporal char- profitable, and on the other hand, the thou- acter, in which past and future are present in sands of graduate students in a precarious the given moment, prohibits the philosopher age desperately trying to publish in peer-re- from grasping eternal truth. Yet it was not viewed journals whose standardized formats until his student Heidegger was able to think and prescribed style (especially in a field like Being under the sign of Time that it became psychology—O woe to Psyche with no Eros clear how much the stable ground of truth abounding!) kill all signs of lively thought. was to be shaken by the perpetual shuddering But rest assured, dear reader, POIESIS itself of temporal being. is not peer-reviewed and aims instead for id- iosyncracy and interest—which, as Kierkeg- When Husserl, near the end of his life, aard said (though disparagingly), is the mark said, “Philosophy as a rigorous science—the of the aesthetic. dream is over,” it was not only that he was betrayed by his best student (as perhaps all Whatever its motivation, research today teachers are) but also that Heidegger had still rides under the banner of lasting and shown that truth is boundaried by untruth, provable truth—its latest standard that of “ev- that truth is not the correspondence of state- idence-based” research. But what then is evi- ments with matters of fact but the opening dence? Since Descartes (and that means since which occurs as an unconcealment of what the founding of modern science), evidence is is hidden and which itself can never be trans- characterized by ideas that are clear and dis- parent. If this is the case, then truth is indeed tinct—which ultimately means mathemati- best expressed by poiesis, for only the work POIESIS: A Journal of the Arts and Communication 2013 5 of art can show the struggle between revealing and concealing as brought into the figure (Gestalt) and made visible. Thus truth does show itself, but only as bearing concealment within itself—and such concealment is not a disaster, a “bad star,” but rather the North Star that leads the way to further exploration. So – arts-based research – perhaps the most recent version of the end of phi- losophy. A heresy, we hope, and a provocation. Is it anything more than a failure to stay within limits—neither art nor science, but a mélange of the two that is fated to miscarry the virtues of each? Yet it seems we now live in an age of hybridity, in which the melée, the “muddle in the middle,” is our home and sacred land.