SPRING || SUMMER 2023
PERFORMING PROCESS LAUNCH EVENTS 23-24 MARCH
Embracing Uncertainty
Creative practice, pedagogy and research foreground the importance of uncertainty and not knowing; however, can such principles and values be taught or even practised? How are uncertainty, not knowing and failure approached as generative forces from multi-disciplinary perspectives? What role or value has the practising of creative uncertainty within the increasingly uncertain conditions of contemporary life? What new interdisciplinary conversations urgently need to be initiated for living creatively in uncertain times?
Between 23 – 24 March 2023, we are delighted to welcome Dr. Stuart Firestein to Nottingham Trent University, to engage with us in a series of events exploring the role of uncertainty, not knowing and failure within both the arts and sciences. Dr Stuart Firestein is chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, and author of Ignorance: How it Drives Science (2012) and Failure: Why Science is So Successful (2015).
Lunchtime Talk by Stuart Firestein
Thursday 23 March
Location: Nottingham Trent University, Bonington 122
Noon - 2pm, lunch provided
As part of the ‘Creative Innovation Across Discipline’ research lecture series hosted by the School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University [series coordinated by Iryna Kuksa]
Stuart Firestein will share his current research and thinking, drawing on his recent publications.
Embracing Uncertainty
- Writer-artist Emma Cocker and neuroscientist Stuart Firestein in conversation
- UK Book Launch of No Telos!
- Launch of Performing Process online research resource
Location: Primary Studios, in collaboration with Beam Editions
Details: 6pm-10.30pm
Food provided by Small Food Bakery
Free but booking essential: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/performing-process-embracing-uncertainty-tickets-566642301377
Writer-artist Emma Cocker and neuroscientist Stuart Firestein will discuss failure and ‘not knowing’ as generative forces from the perspectives of art and science, exploring tactics for knowing how to not know and for embracing uncertainty during uncertain times. This conversation extends the dialogue between Emma and Stuart initiated in Summer 2021, as part of the Rhode Island School of Design, Center for Complexity Symposium in 2021. See https://carryforward.xyz/Embracing-Uncertainty
This event will also mark the launch of PERFORMING PROCESS in conjunction with a presentation/launch of the publication No Telos! (eds.) Emma Cocker and Danica Maier, which explores the critical role of uncertainty, disorientation, not knowing and open-ended activity within creative practice. No Telos! considers different tactics for resisting the increasingly outcome-motivated or achievement-oriented tendencies of contemporary culture, by shifting emphasis from a mode of telos- or goal-driven productivity towards experimental forms of process-led exploration, subversive playfulness and wilful irresolution.
DREAM: Tactics for Embracing Uncertainty
Friday 24 March, 11.00 – 4.00
With guest Stuart Firestein
A full day event of short presentations and discussion, where PhD researchers and research colleagues at Nottingham Trent will share their own perspectives on how uncertainty, not knowing and failure operate as generative research tactics within their practice research. This is part of the PhD seminar series DREAM but welcome to other researchers interested in the Performing Process research thematic.
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PERFORMING PROCESS Monthly Reading Group 2023
Tuesdays 16.00- 18.00
21 March - Embracing Uncertainty
25 April - Tacit Knowledge
23 May - Material Correspondences
27 June - Disclosing Process
18 July - Expositionality
A series of readings introducing and discussing a range of perspectives for deepening understanding of the creative and critical potential of ‘process’ within practice. Readings will be sent in advance - contact emma.cocker@ntu.ac.uk and danica.maier@ntu.ac.uk to join the reading group and receive the texts.
SPRING || SUMMER 2022
PERFORMING PROCESS Reading Group 2022
Thursdays, 4.30 – 6.30 online
A series of readings introducing and discussing a range of perspectives for deepening understanding of the creative and critical potential of ‘process’ within practice. Readings will be sent in advance - contact emma.cocker@ntu.ac.uk and danica.maier@ntu.ac.uk to join the reading group and receive the texts.
Thursday 21 April — Slow Practices
Thursday 28 April — Autotelic/Towards Flow
Thursday 5 May — Modes of Attention
Thursday 12 May — Makerly Thinking
Wednesday 25 May — Embodied Cognition
Thursday 23 June — Embracing Uncertainty (Linked to event — see details below)
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Makerly-thinking: Embodied Cognition
Artistic and post-cognitivist approaches to knowing share a similar problem or challenge — how does one account for and give articulation to embodied and material forms of cognition? What can be learnt in the mutual exchange between these two fields of practice? We are delighted to welcome Visiting Professor Simon Penny (University of California, Irvine. See simonpenny.net) to Nottingham Trent University, to engage with us in a series of events drawing on his current research interests. Simon Penny is an artist, theorist and teacher with a longstanding focus on emerging technologies and on embodied and situated aspects of artistic practice, and is author of Making Sense: Cognition, Computing, Art and Embodiment (MIT PRESS 2017) and organiser of A Body of Knowledge - Embodied Cognition and the Arts conference (2016).
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Please email emma.cocker@ntu.ac.uk and danica.maier@ntu.ac.uk to express interest in the PERFORMING PROCESS thematic and to join the mailing list.