Art as Research. Research as Art. Anything goes?

JOUR FIXE Discussing Methods and Materials

A central part of a scientific paper is its “Materials and Methods” section that helps colleagues to elucidate and reproduce a given experimental set-up. It is this closer look that may decide upon the (mis) fortune or further development of the finding. In the JOUR FIXE we would like to provide a forum for discussion that has the goal to approach the practice of artistic and scientific methods. It is about the questions of traceability, precision and rigor, about the role of (lucky) chance, contingencies and accidents, about processes and plans, sketches and (art) works. Is there a necessity for using a “method”? What is a method actually “doing” – not merely in its very context but also in a societal sense? Is a method a constraint that should be avoided? The guests will report on their work and their approaches of engaging with interdisciplinary boundaries, artistic positions, and socio-cultural or economic strategies. In the best case, the audience will experience how things, processes, concepts, or matters of concern, that may affect us, are generated, negotiated or constructed.