Through the evidence of those artefacts generated through our live enquiry we address the questions:

PRACTICES + ECOLOGIES: How do specific aesthetic research practices enable/enhance aesthetic thinking? 

CONDITIONS + AGENCIES: What are the conditions for aesthetic thinking, and how might these conditions be nurtured? What enables / supports the emergence of the conditions for aesthetic thinking, and what inhibits / limits the emergence of such conditions? Who / what is the agent of aesthetic thinking?

A variety of action, thus, intrinsically careful, non focused on differences but on the emergences enabled by the dynamics of a modulated, an articulated continuum.

An attending rather than intending action. A careful attention. An almost permanently latent, sensible action—noticing, sensing, primarily.

Sensing—what happens, what appears, what emerges in and through the dynamic articulation of the extended—or, at least neither clearly nor steadily delimited—self. A subtle, liminal vibration articulating—intimately—sensing, attending and self-modulating. The articulation of minimal, oscillating displacements.

A network of vibrating parts—of oscillating participants.

A field of resonances nourishing the vibrations that enable it—silently, intimately influencing the joinings of the joined parts and furthermore their vibrant matters.

Acting, thus, as co-vibrating participation in a shared field of immanent resonances, as a continuous, adaptive, careful variation of frequencies and forms of resonating vibrations—as an attentive participation in the resonant continuum of the co-vibrating joined parts.

A fine, subtle, almost unnoticeable oscillation, also, between allowing and proposing—between accepting and altering.

Tentative, attentive pro-posing. Moving along the dynamics of resonance. Placing—qualifying, rather than making place. Place, not in the sense of where thinking happens but rather as the pro-ceeding of thinking.

An oscillation, again. Moving forth and back—pro-ceed as pro-cede. Moving forward—without ever abandoning the resonant sphere of the articulated continuum, remaining always a part. Giving up—a confined self delimited through oppositions, through contra-dictions—without ever retreating (wehre to go if there is no other place—no other pro-cess—now?).

Yielding: bringing forth through surrendering—fruitful acceptance, acceding proposition. 

Without de-ciding—without cutting up.

Without a deciding and decided self. Rather a contingent agency—a part-icularity. A selfless self realizing a purposiveness without purpose.

Purposiveness as resonance—as an emergence of the mutual con-ditioning of the part-icipants. An immanent, spontaneous, emergent, distributed—in its origin and its actualization—purposiveness.

An ex-pression of the dynamic articulation of the parts without ex-pressing their singularities but "something else". "Something" not reducible either to each part nor to the whole but only enabled by the dynamics of participation, of articulation of the whole. "Something else" that does not abandon, does not transcend either the parts nor the whole.

"Else": different but not additional. A trans-formative but not trans-cendent difference. Di-fference as transformative dis-closure: an opening of forms (and meanings) through the sedimented, the crystallized forms (and meanings). "Through" in both senses: across the currently appearing and by means of it—of the articulation, of the contingency of the actions of the parts now disclosing (themselves). 

Parts appearing to themselves—to those endowed with the agency of co-constituting presences for themselves, of enabling parts and whole to appear to themselves—anew. To a certain extend, at least.

Maybe maintaining certain identity—certain possibility of "being the same", of continuing "being the same", of recognizing the former presences through the presences appearing now.

Maybe questioning identity—breaking continuity, and more fundamentally, questioning the phenomenal stability of selves. Questioning the identity between the operativity of the selves and their presence. Or maybe better, more fundamentally, participating in the fluidity underlying any discontinuity, any difference.

on aesthetic thinking

A variety of contact. A manner of being in touch, of realizing the current contact—the inevitable touch.

Or, alternatively, questioning one basic condition of possibility of touch— differentiations, singularizations, out-linings, in-closures: the constitution of units and consequently of non-units, entities and spaces in between—a way of participating in a continuum. An articulated continuum.

Articulation, thus, as alternative to singularization, to separation—and therefore to contact.

Selves as zones, as frames, as particularities, as specifications—without breaking a plastic, heterogeneous, dynamic wholeness, but articulating it, modulating it.

No touch, thus, as starting point, but participation. Not departing, thus, from establishing contact, but from specifying a variation in the already present joining, in the conjugation—a specific way of participating, of continuing part-taking. 

No begin, thus. Again, now referring to time: no cut, no separation—between past and present, between that moment and this one, between "before, that" and "now, this", but, again, a modulation of a constant, articulated present.

The same body—a body as part, a body as subtly, porously demarcated zone; a body in action, a body in transit—reorganizing (itself), disposing (itself) in different ways, adapting (itself) to itself-becoming, to its own needs and wishes, to its own curiosity, to the constant, infinite variations of its environments. A constant and complex re-arrangement of different zones of this continuous present.

A way of re-arranging—of taking place, of becoming place in a different way.

Carefully. With care.

A primordial, crude, raw care—a careless care.

A care without will-based, conscious intentionality. In this sense, a care without intention—without goal, without end.

Instead, an spontaneous care—a mutual care, a care emanating from the joinings, the articulation of the continuous present. Arising, occurring from sensing—mutedly, silently, without representation, without any other presence than the sensing (itself)—the sense emerging through the performance of the own dynamics of the complex present present.

Care as intrinsic part of part-taking. Without reasons, without motivations, without targets, without explanations, without justifications. Even without object—taking care as an intransitive variety of action—of being-in-action. 

Care as a manifestation, as an expression of the articulated continuum—of the continuously extended sense of self of a porously, subtly delimited self.

The I is touched by the mutual recognition of a neighboring mediation, as a testimony of the other, of the non-self, of the counterpart. The self, or also the experienced presence, is constituted from the confirmation and reflection of the space, the representation, the presences of the other that reflects back into one's own presence. Is only the perception of touch generating the experience of a moment of touch?

A juxtaposition also constitutes contact. A touch without direct consequences. Fields, surfaces, systems can be in relation with each other as parallel existences and have little or no influence on what is adjacent. What is the origin of the degree of exchange beyond the borders? Which influences change the strength of the osmotic conditions of spheres? Depending on the direction, the effectiveness of the internal exchange processes varies their way inwards or outwards and thus also further into new areas beyond borders.

Contact – the state or condition of touching. Con-tact – a with-together in-touch. To make connection. Connection - the state or fact of being (already) connected, a binding or joining together. Act of connecting – circle of relations, of intimate relations.  To establish relationship, to bring together.

Connect – also to reach the target, of a hit or blow. Towards the making of connection without reaching towards, without reaching towards target or goal. Closer to communication – to make common. Yet this making common of communication simultaneously connects and cuts. To join or to unite, at the same time as to share or to divide out. Impart – ‘into, in’ and partire ‘to divide, part’. Partake – to have a part in. Simultaneously, joining and separating, joining through separation. Separation as a condition for joining, for rejoining, for being-in-touch. Separate – to pull apart, from se- ‘apart’ and parare ‘make ready, prepare’. Separation as preparation – creating the conditions for reconnection, reorganisation of the common.

Con-tact. With-touch. In-touch. With tact – sensitive to feeling, discernment in action or in conduct. Tactful - with tact; full of, having, characterized by touch. With touch. In-touch. In-tact. Intact – an unbroken whole, complete, uncontaminated, not touched. Untouched – unharmed or uninjured, but also to be unmoved, unmovable. In – ‘not, opposite of, without’ - touch. A state of being intact, not in tact. Thus, towards a way of being in-tact that unsettles the intact, that de-stabilises, de-solidifies the illusory sense of separateness as a self-contained and impervious whole. Separation as a means of unsettling the illusory separation of being intact, not touched. Partaking – a taking part, taking a part, taking a-part. Taking apart – again, again, redistribution of the common through partaking, through taking a-part. Separation into parts as a precondition for reconnection, for reparation, for restoring a sense of dynamic wholeness, a wholeness that is in-tact not intact. 

Taking apart. Destabilization of an illusory whole, the whole that actually separates and divides - the sense of self as separate, as self-contained. Separation as disconnection, as a cutting off from the continuum. The cut of noun-ing, of naming into parts. De-ciding. A this and this, a that and that, a such and such. In short, representation. Here, not separation as preparation for reparation nor reconnection. Again, as in separation: to pull apart, from se- ‘apart’ and parare ‘make ready, prepare’. Rather, a cutting off or apartness without any making ready for a-part-ness. Apartness - not as a precondition for partaking, for participation, or for taking a part. But as without-ness, by itself, set to the side. Only the se- of separation then, no parare, no making ready. Se- as in secret, a setting apart, to hide or exclude; from se- ‘without, apart’ and cernere ‘separate’. The double separation of the secret. Se-cret. From the root krei – to sieve, to discriminate or to distinguish. This illusory whole of self felt as secret, as a double separation, a without. Intact not in-tact. To bring into touch – contact. Con-tact. With tact. A gentle touch, a sensitive touch – for care is needed for destabilising this illusory whole, this apartness. For a taking apart which is really a way of joining, of re-joining, for reconnecting with the continuum. Taking apart and (re)joining as a way of reorganization – reorganizing through joining and taking apart. Orientation. Disorientation. Reorientation. Repeat. Perpetual reorganization – endless continuum of joining and taking a-part.