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Dear Tom, Thank you very much for this information about your talk with Shuddhabrata Sengupta which sounds incredibly interesting! It would be good to hear more about it - maybe after the event itself? And thank you very much for the further information on the School of Political Arts. I notice with interest that: >The school¹s aim is to provide artists with a high-level training in the social >sciences (methods for empirical inquiry), and, conversely, to confront social >scientists and public or private sector professionals with the qualities and >methodologies of the arts. In the section from the description of Latour's School of Political Arts quoted above, I am torn between thinking of all the amazing ways to articulate (some) of the 'qualities and methodologies of the arts' sufficiently well for them to register on the radar of social scientists or private sector professionals, and the realisation that the process of making them [more] explicit and accessible in this way would be one of the mechanisms by which they would be incorporated into the aggregating and instrumentalising logic of (contemporary) capitalism. Yet, I am fully aware (from my work on the theories of Bracha Ettinger) that there are some aspects of art making that are utterly resistant to this kind of articulation as a method and therefore to incorporation (although not resistant to other kinds of articulation). As someone who is very much embroiled in attempts to articulate 'qualities and methodologies' of art (especially distributed art), I am aware that I am as much a part of the pedagogical turn as I am a critic of it. This contradictory position is intriguing to me, and the place that I find to be the most interesting right now. From my understanding of the concept (and material reality) of what we are discussing this month I suspect that there is no escape, as such, from the pedagogical turn - so embedded is it in the democratising and automating processes of contemporary knowledge production that perhaps it is worth considering artistic (and other) strategies focused on ways of encountering its logic without reproducing it? Kind regards, Kate On 17/05/2010 16:21, "Tom Holert" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Dear Kate, > > Many thanks for this highly informative post. As I am currently preparing a > talk on "knowledge production" and exhibiting research in the museum (to be > held in dialogue with Shuddhabrata Sengupta from Raqs Media Collective at MMK > at Frankfurt this Thursday - > http://www.mmk-frankfurt.de/de/vermittlung/veranstaltungen/), it arrived most > timely. > > Concerning Bruno Latour's école d'art politique one can retrieve more > information from betonsalon's site: > > http://www.betonsalon.net/spip.php?article218&lang=en > > "Sciences Po School of Political Arts > Opening scheduled in 2010. Founded by Bruno Latour and Valérie Pihet > > ³This school is not about science, nor arts, nor politics. No matter the > initial calling ‹ research, politics, the arts ‹ the task lies in front of > these disciplines, it does not belong to any of them in advance. This is why > we will be able to host so many different professions and professionals: what > they already know is far less important to us than the trajectory that we will > effect with them. We will not join science, art and politics together but > rather dissemble them first and, unfamiliar and renewed, take them up again > afterwards, but differently.² BRUNO LATOUR, Director of The School of > Political Arts > The School of Political Arts is the first course of its kind: combining the > social sciences, humanities, and the arts broadly considered, breaking down > disciplinary barriers, and overcoming the artificial divide between the arts > and the sciences, between the academic and the professional. The School is > open to young professionals from around the world‹academics, artists, > architects, designers, curators, journalists, entrepreneurs, etc.‹seeking to > hone their skill set, advance their academic expertise, or even actively > reassess their careers. The school¹s aim is to provide artists with a > high-level training in the social sciences (methods for empirical inquiry), > and, conversely, to confront social scientists and public or private sector > professionals with the qualities and methodologies of the arts. These two > fields will not be studied side by side; but rather will converge through > teaching experiments and an innovative curriculum grounded in common objects > of study. The public sphere will be taken as the focal point of this > convergence. For, indeed, the question at the heart of this project is the > crisis of representation (in the largest possible sense). This crisis can only > be overcome by associating three practices of representation that have as yet > been relatively separated: political representation, scientific > representation, and aesthetic representation. The School¹s pedagogical program > is grounded in project development and production. Participants will have to > work in groups on a specific project throughout the year, with a particular > emphasis on fieldwork. A considerable number of the proposed courses will be > in direct resonance with these projects; the remaining teachings will provide > core curricular knowledge in keeping with the spirit of the school. > The main teaching body will be decisively international, composed of renowned > artists, social scientists, art historians, and new media theorists, etc. > Their contributions can take on a variety of formats and tempos (periodic or > regular teachings, from a one hour master class to an entire trimester¹s > coursework)." > > > Certainly another instance of the pedagogical turn in the arts, complete with > the PR lingo of inter/transdisciplinary confrontation/convergence/experiments > and the notorious urge "to work in groups". > > All best, > Tom