dear all:


I wish to thank  you George for your very frank, detailed and careful responses to my commentary.  (And I was sorry to learn you were not feeling well.)

I also think that my critique of some sited arts/science or arts-health sector collaboration was a bit harsh, and yet I believe some of the criteria for reflection/reception  or discussion of different sets of tacit agreements or engagements (especially as such is potentially, in many cases, interactional and inviting audience participation) could be helpful,  and indeed new agreements or negotiations are being sought i think;  

and i am trying to also reflect, then, on the membership or the reason for (non virtual and virtual) critical dialogue on a list such as this one, which was initiated by an interest in curating new media arts practices, i suppose.  curatorial concerns are not necessarily decisive on a joint venture between scientists and artists, or individuals and organizations, but i was aware, George, that you honestly spoke about the need for income or dissemination, as well as being offered such opportunities in the first place. 

in what measure then is curatorial business of interest to some of us, or is it perhaps not (many of us who practice tend to often cure and curate the work as well, which can be a disadvantage perhaps, on some occasion, but i have preferred  a certain amount of input on the mise en scène. 


>>>
One of the aims of the project
was to support embodied self-representations that acknowledge the existence
of subjectivities that go beyond the labels we operate under within these
institutions - be that as health care workers, visitors or patients/clients.
>>>

>>- the choice of venue was driven by a desire to engage with
a broader population beyond various professional cliques - and to work in a
context in which people where already engaged in a lot of thinking/feeling
*very deeply* about issues of embodiment, physiology, mortality etc.
Its the quality of thinking/feeling that attracted me to working with this
population/audience.>>>

 
You made some stunning/implicit comments also on the subjects ( of artistic/scientific investigation) as "exotic other". ....        (the subjects/objects of collaborative interactivity)

and that made me think about recent body art or performative bioart practices linked to tissue culture and culturing experiments , for example, 
(not sure whether to call them that, but once the culturing is exhibited or out on show, in an art context, one will have left the lab, or a controlled scientific space, and moved into
(post) spectacular space, and here the self-exoticizing might start or the othering processes, or the conflations that are now necessarily fashionable of human and nonhuman/animal).  how is the audience figured in these relations, are they at times experiencing their organisms/sensorial feedbacks, internal data or biomechanics as revelatory or scopically abusive [i am here thinking of Gunther van Hagen, of Bodyworlds, tryng to do JosephBeuys soclalculptures]?)

can a-life or tissue culture  be interactional? how?  and self-reflective in the sense in which, say, we used to think of Konzepttanz as a strategy of refusing to dance by drawing attention to the various determinations of the process of reception/expectation of the dance [movement]  within the capturing apparatus of the whole thing (theatre, cinema, stage, gallery, museum., tv studio, reality TVlab., second life island...)?

I would love to hear about this from Oron.. 

and I am of course interested in experiencing Tina Gonsalves' work on emotions and chameleon contagion, i have only read about it, not actually run into it. (her citing her science collaborators' satisfaction was a nice touch). 


>>
I see all the above as intrinsic to a concept of aesthetics in an expanded
field, right-living, Social Sculpture etc. What I need next from a funding,
policy and professional research perspective - are some tools and resources
to help me assess, evaluate and quantify these goals/claims for the benefit
of the people who decide how and if this work is to be financed on an
ongoing basis.
>>


you raise an issue rarely discussed here, George, and that is, basically, health.  
right-living, this term i do not know, but i know that health is about as critical an issue as it can get, and so to think science [ or art practices]  through our various resistances to want to face mortality or failure, illness and humiliation and decay, is a challenge,  I suppress it often. 

thanks therefore, and also for sending me to this blog (I avoid blogs and can't seem to want to spend time reading them, much less "leaving a comment").

>>from Leisureartsblog:  
 "When artists like Rirkrit Tiravanija create high-profile aestheticised versions of these ordinary spaces of resistance inside art galleries, they risk perpetuating the myth that the right and proper place for non-commodified exchange (and aesthetic experience), is a special architectural space, rather than recognizing that everyday life itself is riddled with such opportunities." This statement is crucial in understanding how we might develop the sort of critical-democratic aesthetic milieu that John Dewey (whom Iheiln draws from extensively) envisioned, and which Iheiln argues blogging enables, "...the blog as a tool of documentation and interaction is a useful alternative to gallery-based situations, in accommodating the ongoing rhythms of ordinary lived experience." Our only concern is that far too often artists that literally work outside the gallery still work within it conceptually due to internalizing the ideological and discursive constructs of the professional art system. They bracket off portions of their lives and list them as "projects" or "works" on their resumes, they "document" their explorations into so-called conviviality.... >>


i doubt blogging or youtube social networkculture enable a transformataional "critical-democratic aesthetic milieu" or contribute to our health, but then again, that might sound harsh and premature.  But this blog's comment, above,  on conceptual barriers sounds dead right. 


wishing all a good thanks giving weekend

Johannes






Johannes Birringer
director, DAP lab
School of Arts 
Brunel University
West London 
UB8 3PH   UK
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/dap