Critical Discussion Lab – ‘art’ - July 2022
The “art” critical discussion lab provided a useful space to think about the work of artists within academic projects and what art can do. Steve Pool began by introducing some key concepts and ideas within artistic traditions in the West, and also an account of how artists work relationally within communities. Jo Vergunst helped expand this by describing how artists, working with academics, can open up new ways of knowing and seeing. Artists are certainly not there to illustrate a research idea or curate a set of images, but can work relationally to disturb, think, co-create and imagine the world differently. Finally, Amy Dozier articulated very clearly how visual approaches helped the impact of the work she was doing as an ecologists. We were then invited to ‘start with a tree’ in small groups. In our group we shared understandings of art both as process and product and explored the ways we had experienced trees both through images, texts and within our selves.
Thanks to Peter Kraftl, Steve Pool, Jo Vergunst and Amy Dozier.