Aesthetics@NEB - some thoughts for the discussion
Jens Badura
The "New European Bauhaus" initiative aims to create environments that are worth living in for everyone. The shape of these environments plays an essential role. This requires aesthetic competence and must go beyond pragmatic-technical problem-solving approaches and pleasing infrastructures and products.
Aesthetics is the reflection on how the environment impacts our perception, what effects environmental qualities have on our well-being and how design1 can contribute to enabling a good life. Aesthetics is therefore not a synonym for beauty, and aesthetic competence is not limited to making things "beautiful".
In the NEB's programme, aesthetics is one of the three leitmotifs and - at least in the official language - equated with "beauty". This is a narrow approach that fails to recognise the significance and potential of aesthetics as a reflection-driven engagement with the designed environment. The relevance of the arts, design (as a discipline), culture and the creative industries for the conceptualisation and implementation of the socio-ecological transformation and the "green deal", which is explicitly emphasised in the NEB, is counteracted by this narrow focus on the goal of "beautification".
It is therefore necessary to include the arts, design, culture2 and the creative industries as knowledge and competence carriers. Through their ways of thinking and proceeding, they can contribute specific expertise that is of a different quality, but equally relevant for the realisation of the desired transformation processes, as that of the dominant, scientifically and technically driven approaches.
These include not only competences such as "out of the box" thinking, future literacy, disruptive imagination - which are often mentioned in a buzzword-like manner, but are not very familiar outside of the corresponding specialist communities with regard to their mechanisms of action and enabling conditions. It is also about practices of knowledge production in the context of artistic research, cultures of transdisciplinarity that have emerged in the context of the arts, co-creative processes and transfer practices that operate beyond classical approaches to mediation.
For the future development and implementation of the NEB and its concerns, it is therefore urgently necessary to integrate the competences named, the corresponding actors and their institutions on an equal footing in strategic and operative processes of programme design. This includes, among other things, the stronger consideration of aesthetic questions and expertise within the framework of policy-writing and political decision-making processes and, with a view to the creation of suitable funding arrangements and evaluation models, as well as with regard to an appropriate profiling of the relevance of aesthetics within the framework of the political and public discourse on the NEB.
1 Design is understood here in the sense of shaping action in general – according to the German word
"Gestalt" – and does not mean "design" as a defined discipline.
2 What is meant here is a broad understanding of culture that go beyond genuinely artistic
contributions and also includes the fields of activity of the cultural sector such as cultural mediation
and work with and on tangible and intangible cultural heritage.
IA Lab - Input Jens Badura / extended Version 22.10.22
Order of knowledge and relevance regime
According to the Anthropocene diagnosis, which has become a commonplace in the meantime, man has become a "geological agent" whose capacity to destroy the foundations of life that make his existence possible is now dramatically evident. The common keywords used to linguistically mark this diagnosis of crisis are "anthropogenic climate change" and "biodiversity crisis". And it is in this resonance space that the demand for a fundamental socio-ecological transformation or, in other words, for a substantial "green transition" emerged.
If one does not reduce this green transition to a more or less activist demand for the reduction of CO2 emissions but asks for the deeper causes of why this reduction has now become urgently necessary, the one-sidedness of the established order of knowledge as well as the blind spots of the relevance regimes1 that apply within it quickly come into focus. It is about a triad of factors that have become disastrous in their almost unrestricted dominance and that have increasingly shaped human interaction with its environment historically: The interplay of a) the principle of objectifiability in the sense of a decoupling of knowledge content and the subject of knowledge, b) the privileging of propositionality as a medium for articulating knowledge content, and c) the dominance of the scientific-technical dispositive for the development and application of instruments for dealing with problems. Common to all three factors is the tendency towards desensualisation - that is, an engagement with man's sensually constituted relationship to the world.
And it is precisely this triad that is fatally effective: because it has produced an instrumentalanthropocentric knowledge for the sake of domination that is incapable of corresponding with the needs of its non-human environment. The consequence is - analogous to Georg Lukac's transcendental version of a “transcendental homelessness” of modern man - an "ecological homelessness" of the anthropocence, which today manifests itself concretely in the form of a loss of connection with the planet. In other words: The planet is no longer available without restriction as a human home, it is no longer the place that holds the possibilities for "existential support" (“existenzieller Halt” according to Martin Heidegger) for human beings.
Ecological homelessness
A substantially advanced "green transition" must therefore deal with the question of how this "ecological homelessness" and the "solastalgia"2 that accompanies it can be overcome - and a key to this is the critical confrontation with the aforementioned, dominant order of knowledge and its regimes of relevance. For in this confrontation lies the key with which options for a corresponding socio-ecological transformation can be developed.
In contemporary discourse, numerous approaches and debates dealing with this issue can be found in the field of tension between the academic-theoretical and the artistic field. Central is the question of how a world relationship, an order of knowledge and the associated relevance regimes would have to be constituted to be able to work in the direction of an anthropoDEcentrisation. This includes approaches that propose an expansion of the political beyond the sphere of the human - as in the case of Bruno Latour's "Parliament of Things"3, Jane Bennet's "Political Ecology of Things"4 or the "Planetary Perspective" in the sense of Dipes Chakarbarty5. Positions go a step further that not only strive for a theoretically guided revision of paradigms of thought, but also take a look at the forms of thinking and, in order to enable through “form experiments” a different way of thinking, dealing with and negotiating phenomena. Relevant examples of such experiments in form can be found, for example, in Donna Haraway6, Ann Lowenhaupt-Tsing7 or parts of the so-called "Nature Writing" movement.
Artistic research as aesthetic practice
In addition to the aforementioned approaches, artistic research can also make a specific contribution to the revision of the order of knowledge and relevance regime. What is meant by artistic research here is an aesthetic practice that makes artistic ways of thinking and proceeding fruitful as a medium for the production of a different type of knowledge. In the original sense of the word, "aesthetics" is understood as an epistemological category and refers to modes of cognition that cannot be grasped in the propositional-cognitive sense, but which, as a complementary dimension of cognition, allow insights into the "fullness of the characteristics of a phenomenon" and their interrelation. In the language of tradition and with recourse to the "inventor" of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline, Alexander Baumgarten formulates: It is about the sensual-intuitive dimension of cognition, which steps alongside the discursive-logical form and correspondingly requires other conditions of gaining, articulating and negotiating knowledge.
However, effectively establishing artistic research understood in this way as a "co-player" in the context of knowledge production, and thus also challenging the prevailing regimes of relevance, is not an easy task. Pointedly said: The arts are usually assigned a function that oscillates between spiritual formation, entertainment, education, decoration and mediation. As a rule, however, art is not recognised as a producer of knowledge because the kind of knowledge that is or could be produced here is simply not seen or recognised as knowledge or at least not as relevant knowledge.
To understand more precisely why this is so - and what to look out for if one wants to change this - it is helpful to examine more closely the sources from which the debate about artistic research is fed and how this shapes the role, recognition and potential of artistic research (until) today.
Roots and contexts
Three genealogical dimensions come together in the discourse on artistic research: a) the critical self-reflection of the sciences and scientific research practices b) the shift in the functional role of artists or art in the socio-cultural context, and c) political-institutional developments in the university context.8 Ad a) In the sense of a historical epistemology, it can be shown that from the 1920s onwards, a critique of the claim to objectivity of the sciences began, which emphatically posed both questions of the theory of science and the sociology of science. Only a few authors such as Ludwik Fleck, Thomas S. Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers and Hansjörg Rheinberger may be mentioned here representative of many others. This critique of scientific objectivity was accompanied by an opening and turning towards intuitively shaped and creative processes in science. In this context, art and artistic practices came into view as a producer and carrier of knowledge - and the debate on artistic research gained momentum. At the same time, however, critical historical epistemology and with-it artistic research also became a latent threat to the claim to power of those (still dominant) sciences that did not want to submit to a substantial critique of objectivity. The conditions for a "dialogue at eye level" were therefore not favorable - and the efforts of some proponents of "orthodox" science to disqualify artistic research from politics and society as irrelevant or as charlatanry were correspondingly widespread.
Ad b) The reformation of the functional role and self-image of art and artists in the 20th century brought about a new perspective on their socio-political and economic significance. This was accompanied by the question of the "use" and added value of art, e.g. in the context of justifying art funding. Profiling art as research seemed to be useful in several respects: on the one hand, it offered a new role model for artists that could no longer rely on unique selling points such as the stereotype of the “Bohemien” or other socio-cultural characteristics as well as a supposedly privileged access to creativity "creativity". The life model "artist" increasingly became the general role model of the "creative class" and its milieus and (also creative economic) activities, while at the same time the nimbus of the artist as a special figure was more and more disenchanted. Classifying art as research and thus integrating it into an additional reputational dispositive offered an opportunity for renewed role-concepts. At the same time, artistic research could serve as a justification for the usefulness of the arts - in the sense that socially relevant knowledge was produced here, not "just art". Both tactics proved to be dangerous: neither was anything gained by making artistic research a mere label that anyone can hang around themselves as they see fit for reputational purposes, because it threatens to become arbitrary and correspondingly questionable. It makes just as little sense if (at least implicitly) the impression is conveyed that art that cannot legitimize itself through a research benefit is of lesser importance. Here, the acceptance of artistic research by artists who do not see themselves as "researching" threatens to dwindle, and thus the connection between artistic research and the general art world is weakened.
Ad c) In political-institutional terms, the emergence of artistic research as a defined field was linked to the reorganization of the university system. Worth mentioning here is the establishment of academic qualifications such as the practice-based PhD for engineers and designers in the UK, which expanded the field of academically recognized research methods and forms of knowledge to include practice-based and practice-led approaches. The proponents of artistic research were able to build on this development and integrate artistic ways of thinking and proceeding, which were considered practice-oriented, into the academic structures. In addition, the implementation of the so-called “Bologna reform” at art colleges necessitated the creation of a research-oriented 3rd cycle. While the creation of corresponding structures such as PhD-programs and research departments at art colleges means an enormous boost in the establishment of artistic research, it also led to its increasing academization and disciplining. The associated processes such as the creation of research funding structures (such as the "Program for the Development and Exploitation of the Arts" of the Austrian Science Fund FWF9), the founding of professional societies (such as the Society for Artistic Research) and corresponding peer cultures (as in the case of the Journal for Artistic Research) further promoted this development. This trend towards academization is ambivalent: on the one hand, it has led to a growing importance and visibility of artistic research in the university context, which certainly creates potential with regard to work on green transition issues (one example would be the "UniNEtZ" in Austria10, where, with the active participation of art colleges, universities are working together on concepts for implementing the SDGs in research, teaching and transfer, and artistic research is explicitly included). On the other hand, there is also the danger that the institutionaldisciplinary organizational structures of the academic dispositif and its deep inscription in the current order of knowledge and its relevance regimes increasingly restrict the transdisciplinary and partly “fuzzy” logic of artistic research.
This brief digression is important because it makes clearer in which framework artistic research has to move and prove itself if it is to be able to make serious and effective contributions to social transformation processes such as the green transition: Recognition by the established sciences, realistic expectations of society and politics as well as fruitful framework conditions in the academic business are not simply given, but in many cases must first be established, communicated and defended.
Challenges
Against this background, three interconnected, concrete challenges need to be addressed in particular: the transdisciplinary, the political and the institutional challenge. The transdisciplinary challenge is to establish a culture of research that allows for an entanglement of different forms of knowledge, types of expertise, and ways of thinking and proceeding. A crucial aspect of this is the willingness of all participants to expose themselves to a certain degree of self-uncertainty and willingness to "delearn" and to engage in role changes: Sometimes one is in the role of expert, sometimes amateur, sometimes ignorant, sometimes querulous - the list could be extended. This is quite demanding, especially with regard to artistic ways of thinking and proceeding in the context of the debate on the green transition, since, as outlined above, the dominant order of knowledge and its relevance regimes structurally stabilize the privileging of knowledge production targeting objectivity, propositionality and an orientation towards technical solutions. Bringing the spheres of scientific-propositional, aesthetic-unconceptual and practical-experiential approaches into an interplay that is not subcutaneously shaped by established positions of authority and hierarchies therefore requires a high degree of sensitivity and empathy, understanding and respect, and also a willingness to renounce privileges. This necessitates carefully curated frameworks and not least enough time. The growing number of study programs that teach skills and competences for strengthening a truly transdisciplinary research culture is a hopeful development here. Just two out of many examples of how to move in this direction would be the MA Transdisciplinarity in the Arts at the ZHdK or the MA in Cross-Disciplinary Studies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where corresponding competences are practized, tested and reflected upon.11
The political challenge is to effectively communicate the relevance of artistic-research thinking and procedures as a reference for political decision-making to decision-makers - and to work towards ensuring that these ways of thinking and proceeding are also equipped with the appropriate resources and implemented in the various functional areas of political opinion-forming processes. Specifically, this includes the system of research funding, including corresponding indicator systems that can adequately capture the intrinsic nature of artistic-research ways of thinking and proceeding. But it is also about the composition of expert panels, about "points to consider" in studies and reports (e.g. the IPCC reports), etc. A hopeful example here would be the "European Forum for Advanced Practices"12, where work is being done on corresponding concepts and recommendations.
The institutional challenge lies in questioning and revising the self-image of the central institutions for the production and transmission of knowledge – in particular the universities and other higher education institutions and research centers. In order to initiate the changes needed to establish a new knowledge culture within the framework of the transdisciplinary challenge, a self-transformation of this system is necessary: New concepts of transfer between the different types of higher education institutions, public and private research entities are necessary as well as a view to new, interacting structural links to society and the economy, which can certainly also bring about fundamental shifts in structures and authority relationship (often referred to by the ambivalent concept of the “third mission”). In this sense, green transition is necessarily "inclusive" and “in between” - and that means that existing barriers must be proactively opened. Above all, it must be ensured that artistic-research and artistic thinking and procedures can play a transversally effective role in the interaction context of the corresponding institutions in the future.
Beyond Beauty
The present is certainly a good time to face up to the challenges outlined above and to make the potential of artistic and research-based ways of thinking and proceeding fruitful for the advancement of a green transition, and not to get stuck in the debate about "CO2 reduction". However, it is also evident that this is a complex and ambitious endeavor. An example of this is the "New European Bauhaus", which is intended to serve as an essential driver for a sustainable social transformation in the sense of the green transition. The leitmotifs of "sustainability", "inclusion" and "aesthetics" serve the NEB as a system of coordinates in which the most diverse actors can contribute and bring together their expertise – including explicitly the arts and the cultural sector in the broader sense. At first glance, this sounds like an attractive and sensible undertaking. On closer inspection, however, it quickly becomes clear that there is still a long way to go before the expertise of artistic research and artistic thinking and proceeding in general is also included on an equal footing in such a framework. Thus, "aesthetics" in NEB parlance and NEB policymaking is translated as "beauty" and (at least implicitly) assigns the role of "beautifiers" to the arts and design. In many cases, this is not done with bad intentions, but rather because there is simply no knowledge or understanding of the knowledge-relevant contributions that artistic thinking and processes, and artistic research in particular, can make in the context of a green transition. What is needed here is both educational work and "epistemic-political lobbying" - and the promotion of concrete projects that illustrate this potential. The window of opportunity is open, let's use it!
Contact:
Jens Badura
Zurich University of the Arts
jens.badura@zhdk.ch
Footnotes
1 What is meant here is the respective dominant, socio-culturally established order of reference and disposition of attention, from which evidence diagnoses are fed and thus regulates the allocation of relevance to phenomena, perspectives, arguments etc.
2 Albrecht, Glenn et al.: Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change, in: Australian Psychatry, 2/2007, https://doi.org/10.1080/10398560701701288 (link checked the 21.10.2022)
3 Latour, Bruno: Politics of Nature - How to bring the sciences into democracy; Cambridge/Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 2004.
4 Bennet, Jane: Vibrant Matter - A political Ecology of Things; Harrogate: Combined Academic Publishers 2009.
5 Chakrabarty, Dipesh: The Climate of History in an Planetary Age; Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2021.
6 Haraway, Donna: Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
7 Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt: The Mushroom at the End of the World. On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins; Princeton: Princeton University Press 2015.
8 To a certain extent, historical classification also includes the question of whether artistic research has not always existed or whether art is not research per se. Here, a distinction must be made between art-immanent research on its own methods and techniques (such as perspective painting or historical performance practice in music) and the interaction between the arts, sciences and technological development, which is just as historically not new, such as in the Renaissance or the historical Bauhaus). From the 1980s onwards, an independent discipline called "artistic research" (arts-based-research) increasingly emerged with the corresponding processes, such as the development of a research community with professional associations and journals, as well as institutional anchoring, especially in the university system, funding schemes, etc.: here, in addition to the practice of artistic research, a meta-discourse on artistic research, standards, etc. takes place.
9 https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/research-funding/fwf-programmes/peek
10 https://www.uninetz.at/en/ (link checked the 21.10.2022)
11 MA Transdisciplinary Studies at Zurich University of the Arts: https://www.zhdk.ch/en/degreeprogrammes/transdisciplinarystudies; MA in Cross-Disciplinary Studies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna: https://www.dieangewandte.at/CrossDisciplinaryStrategies (links checked the 21.10.2022)
12 https://advancedpractices.net