::fibreculture:: Natalie Jeremijenko on technology, art and knowledge

[Molly Beth Hankwitz]

Dear chris, terry, danny, other delurking enthusiasts...

It was great to see such an enthusiastic report on a talk on the list.
Thanks for that, Chris. I'm keen to discuss the following paragraph of your
response in light of Terry's and others comments 

> >The question she asked throughout was whether art can create
> knowledge. By this, she means -- can art can produce knowledge
> that can operate with the same degree of authority as that
> created by the empirically verified, peer-reviewed facts of big
> science? >

This is the section which most resonates with my own preoccupations with
the manner by which knowledge is produced and controlled, at least to the
extent of understanding, at this point in my life, what it means to
"research" and how research is defined within institutions. In other words,
what are the governing "interests" controlling the pursuit of certain types
of research questions and how does one innovate or work autonomously within
these sets of governing practices. What kinds of systems am I entering in
the research process and how does it effect my work? But this is perhaps
just a sensible self-consciousness. 

What I have always enjoyed about BIT and Natalie's ideas is the way in
which the projects, for the most part, not all, retain demystify art
practice for this is, to my way of thinking, without rendering the pursuit
of art at all banal, a fundamental issue in understanding how knowledge
whether art or science, has been conventionally controlled, and,
furthermore, how the Internet is *still* controlled, and that is through
devisive separations - between what is high and what is low, what is real
and what is virtual. Unfortunately, it is too often the self-consciousness
of the institutional framework for knowledge that tends to cause these
splits in our consciousness. 

I dont' think that Natalie's question, 'can art create knowledge...' (and I
hope that I am not now, third hand, taking her comments out of context) is
important. Art does create knowledge! What that knowledge is, where it goes
"historically" and what kinds of knowledge are produced or accepted as art
and are therefore part of determining or governing, or recognzed value
systems is quite another matter - I think this is where art has always
pioneered at the edges and borders of acceptability - for instance, when
Piero Manzoni canned his own shit, exhibited the pristine
cans, and sold it. 

Cheers, 
Molly

Molly Cox-Hankwitz
Postgraduate Research (Phd)
Media and Communications Discipline
Creative Industries Faculty
QUT Gardens Point Campus
GPO Box 2434 Brisbane Q. 4001 Australia
61 7 3864 1136
m.hankwitz at qut.edu.au

"There is no weapon greater than a keen mind honed by fortune, exercising
it's will by way of the imagination." - Cairn of The Weavers